Why Clinton's argument to Super delegates are deeply flawed.

Senator Clinton's argument to the super-delegates is deeply flawed at best and complete rubbish at worst. Her campaign maintains that Clinton is the stronger of the two Democratic candidates; therefore the super-delegates should overturn the will of the voters. She has won the "big states" like California, Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio by rather convincing margins. She argues that if one was to translate her primary wins in California, Texas, New York, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania to electoral college votes, she would already be the nominee. Furthermore, no Democratic candidate can afford to lose traditional strongholds like California, New York and Massachusetts; or the critical swing states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania in November. She also argues that Obama is incapable of winning the white blue collar voters.

This entire line of argument is absurd on several fronts. Firstly, after former Senator John Edwards dropped out following the rather disappointing performance in South Carolina, it became a case of personal preference between Clinton and Obama. Furthermore, after Gov. Mike Huckabee conceded the nomination to Sen. John McCain after Texas and Ohio, the Republican electorate was free to vote in the remaining Democratic races and, in the process, reap havoc. She seemingly has the impression that all her supporters would automatically defect to Sen. McCain in the event of Obama being the nominee. She has an even more absurd impression that the Obama nation would automatically support her candidacy. I may have late breaking news for the Clinton campaign, there is a phenomenon called staying home on election day. That is precisely what I would do if I live in a solidly Republican or Democratic state and Clinton gets the nomination. Otherwise, I will vote for McCain. Clinton cannot win a general election by alienating the African American vote. By arguing that the will of the people should be overturned she is effectively saying that the Party elders should not count the votes of the young people, the educated people, the African American community or people making over $100,000.

This is a brilliant idea. The core supporters in a Democratic Party under Hillary Clinton are people over 65, people with little or no college education, the Hispanics, people making under $50,000 and the rural voters. There are major problems with this coalition. Firstly, white blue collar voters are more liberal economically, but tend to cling to the past. This means they see their current lifestyle as the only kind of lifestyle their children or even grandchildren will have. As a result, they seem unable to see their children, at least, having a different lifestyle from the previous generations. I think they have a very hard time seeing their children going to college, much less having some kind of high paying white collar job after graduating from college. Even among the white blue collar voters that Clinton and the pundits call vital to winning a general election, the Republicans have owned the white male voters since Richard Nixon's election in 1968. Both Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton lost it in their victorious years. Hillary Clinton's claim of winning the white blue collar voters is questionable at best. The rural voters hold more traditional social values, which mean in a general election, they tend to go Republican. Clinton's most reliable electorate would be the Hispanics because the Hispanics have a lot of social and economic conflicts with the African American community. Furthermore, they are very fond of Bill Clinton's presidency. As for people over 65, they tend to be more risk adverse and go for the sure thing. Again, a fairly reliable Clinton electorate given that they are prone to scare tactics. Remember, in the 1996 election, then-President Bill Clinton used the Republican endorsement of privatisation of Social Security to scare the seniors into re-electing Bill Clinton for a second term. As for Sen. Clinton's Catholic votes in Pennsylvania, they are responsible for putting Rick Santorum, an ardent arch-Conservative, into the Senate. That should be anyone's tell-tale sign as to their reliability. Furthermore, the Catholic Church openly opposes any pro-choice candidate, like Clinton, given the endorsement from organisations like the National Organisation of Women for her pro-choice stance. Her Catholic support in Pennsylvania would probably go Republican in November.

In short, Hillary Clinton's appeal is very narrow and, in some cases, belongs on the economically endangered species list. In contrast, Obama appeals to the young colour-blind voters, the affluent voters, the African Americans and the liberals. His candidacy has disproved, to a very large degree, two widely-held beliefs. Firstly, most young people simply do not participate in politics. In the process, he has created a new class of white voters - the white college kids - for future Democratic candidates. The appeal to college kids certainly has that belief turned on its head. Second, the affluent tends to vote Republican. Many exist polls in most states seems to suggest Obama a firm grip on it. It is not just Berkshire Hathaway's Chairman Warren Buffet, the billionaire investor, who is supporting both Clinton and Obama. In Obama's case, people making over $150,000 a year is flocking to his banner.

At the end of the day, Sen. Clinton's politics as usual approach cannot carry the college kids in the sort of numbers to offset her traditional social value blue collar Democratic votes, should they go Republican in November. Worse, her comments about super-delegates overturning the will of the people simply because she is the candidate who can carry the "critical" white blue collar voters will alienate African Americans and the college kids en mass, which may result in Republican control of both the White House and Capitol Hill for the next 100 years. I mean who will vote for a Party which allows elected officials and Party activists to overturn the will of the people whenever a Clinton wishes to run for office. In this case, the Democrats might as well just tell African Americans that no African American can be a Presidential nominee if a white American is interested and until and unless the Republicans have successfully put an African American in the White House.

Welcome to the New Democratic Party.

Clinton's flawed reasoning

Sen. Hillary Clinton now argues that she is the better candidate for the Democratic Party because she has won the "big states" like California, Texas, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvnia, Michigan and Florida. She said that, if the Democratic Party had adopted the winner takes all allocation of delegates like the Republican party, she would already be the nominee. I cannot believe that she is now trying to sell this absurd argument to the super delegates that traditional Democratic states like New York, California would vote for Clinton in the general elections, if she was the nominee, but would vote for McCain if Sen. Barack Obama was the nominee. I cannot further believe that she had the gall to include Michigan and Florida in her overall calculations to steal the nomination. Both Clinton and Obama agreed last year that the votes in Michigan and Florida does not count in choosing the eventual nominee. Furthermore, Clinton is nuts to believe that Texas will ever vote for her. Texas has been a Republican stronghold since 1968. The last Democrat to carry Texas in a general election was Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

It may be late breaking news to the Clinton campaign traditional Democratic strongholds like New York, California and Massachusetts would vote for the Democratic nominee, even if the Party puts up a chimpanzee for President. After eight years of George W. Bush, Clinton wants the Party to now believe that Democratic states would vote for Republican nominee Sen. John McCain instead of Obama merely because Obama lost the primary to Clinton. Democratic voters in those states may prefer Clinton to Obama as Clinton is somewhat of a known entity, but it is lightyears from the assumption that Democratic voters there would defect en masse to McCain. Secondly, Hillary Clinton is the junior Senator from New York. It would be shocking and astounding that she could loose her home state to an upstart in the primary season. Her argument that the vast majority of Democratic voters in these states would vote for her over McCain and McCain over Obama is complete non-sense, even though McCain won the primaries in all those states. The Clinton campaign must have flipped in the nth degree to come up with this argument.

Speaking of flipping, Clinton is the biggest flip flopper since her husband. In the 1992 general election, then candidate Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas accused incumbent President George Bush, the Elder Bush, of being too soft on China. He said that, as President, he would tie China's normal trading status with improvement in her human rights record. During the eight years of his Presidency, Bill Clinton has given China a free ride regarding China's human rights record. Hillary is now flip flopping on Michigan and Florida, seeking some delegate advantage over Obama. The superdelegates cannot let her get away with a daylight robbery like this. Furthermore, when all candidates agreed not to campaign in those two states, Clinton's instant name recognition would practically guarrantee her a win in both states, especially in Michigan. My understanding is that Clinton was the only candidate in the Michigan primary. Every other candidate withdrew their names from the Michigan ballot in support of the Democratic National Committee's decision to strip them of their delegates.

As for her win in Texas, Clinton had 30 years worth of history in that state. Obama was lucky to be able to close the gap to the extent that he did. However, the most important point regarding Texas is that it is a solidly Republican state since 1968. If Clinton believe she could win Texas in November, she must be dreaming. So, frankly, who cares who won the Democratic primary there, given that neither Democratic candidate would seriously consider spending valuable dollars and time there.

Furthermore, the entire big state argument as justification for overturning the vote of the Democratic members is frankly insulting to the other states. If all that matters is who won the primaries in California, New York, Michigan, Ohio and Florida, there is no point in holding primaries or caucasus in the remaining 40 states. Secondly, if that was the case, who cares who won the popular vote. Now, that Penslyvnia has weighed in, we might as well shut down the rest of the contests because whatever is left is, according to this line of argument, unimportant and voters in the remaining states do not need to cast their ballots.

Finally, Clinton should really give serious considerations to defecting to the Republican Party, if she prefers a winner takes all system of allocating delegates. The truth is that we knew what happened in 2000, Al Gore won fewer states than George W Bush. Gore carried only states. Now, Hillary wants to argue that she could win the presidency carrying only the 20 states she won in the primary.

Why Hong Kong broadcast news has no credibility?

The other day both of Hong Kong's local television news aired an CCTV piece about the outrage of local Chinese community in Los Angeles over the remarks of CNN commentator Jack Cafferty. A group of Chinese protestors stood outside CNN Los Angeles office with signs calling CNN lairs and demanding the sacking of Cafferty. The CCTV crew in America found one person, who happened to be an African American man, to call Cafferty's remarks racist. To cover up the lack of journalistic integrity of both local stations, they took and maybe modified the original script before one of their reporters did a voice-over. One could instantly tell it is from CCTV as the CCTV logo and markings were at the top right corner of the screen.

It should first be said that CCTV is a Chinese state-owned television network. This is clearly a Chinese propaganda piece and not legitimate news. Both ATV and TVB, Hong Kong's two independent television stations, should be shamed of themselves for airing such a piece. Had they done their homework beforehand, they would have realized it was pure propaganda. A simple Google news search yielded a result of pre-dominantly pro-Beijing news source. Only a right wing blog site and the LA Times were not. The right wing blog site actually fact checked and found Cafferty's remarks largely on target. The LA Times simply reported the protest without researching the accuracy of Cafferty's remark. The visible absence of international English news coverage regarding those remarks only further reinforces the impression that the CCTV piece was pure propaganda. The major American networks completely ignored it, the major wire services like Reuters and the Associated Press and the international English press like CBC, BBC or the Australians reported nothing on it.

In the case of ATV, they lost their credibility in November last year when they got the office held by Yasuo Fukuda wrong. The reporter reported him as Foreign Minister; to compound the mistake, Fukuda was never Foreign Minister. In parliamentary politics, the Prime Minister shuffles people around like a casino dealer shuffling a deck of cards. To those who are unfamiliar with parliamentary politics, Lord Patten, former European Commission and the last governor of Hong Kong, wrote that whenever government changes after an election, opposition politicians usually find themselves catapulted to ministerial offices. Between elections, the Prime Minister sends politicians from one job to another, sometimes literally on the eve of a major policy debate. So, it was perfectly understandable if Fukuda was Foreign Minister before taking the Premiership a few days earlier, but he was not and had been Prime Minister for over a month at the time of this mistake. So much for ATV's journalistic credibility.

As for TVB, their credibility went out of the window when they aired the CCTV piece. The CCTV piece has a number of critical flaws or questions that would make viewers question the journalistic independence of TVB. If the piece was so racially charged, why the CCTV crew in America was unable to find more people to condemn Cafferty's comments? Secondly, was the lone interviewee put up to say what he said? Also, did the lone interviewee knew or was aware of the comments in question before CCTV interviewed him? Usually, objective journalists bring a portable DVD player with the controversial moment ready for playback if the interviewee needed reminding or was unaware of the moment in question. Hence the next issue with the CCTV piece about the lone interviewee's outrage with Cafferty's comments, did CCTV show the interviewee the entire unabridged version of Cafferty's comments or did CCTV summarized Cafferty's comments to the interviewee? If the interviewee was unaware of the comments in question or the context under which they were made and CCTV gave him a summary, it would be pure propaganda and not journalism because CCTV could and would have spun Cafferty's comments in such a manner that would have elicited the response CCTV wanted. Lastly, why only one person was interviewed? I mean, if they interviewed more people, why did they choose not to air those interviews?

Furthermore, it would have been fine, if both stations choose to only air the piece on their Chinese channels. There was already blanket coverage on Cafferty's remarks in the mainland, which had incited protests in Beijing and Shanghai calling CNN lairs. In any case, the local Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong would fill their pages with this story. In other words, the journalistic harm done would have been minimal. By airing this piece in the English broadcast news using their own reporters for voice-overs, the harm to the journalistic integrity of their news services was much greater. The absence of news coverage in the United States already suggest Cafferty's use of thugs and goons in his remarks was directed solely at the Chinese government and not at the Chinese people. American media today are very sensitive to the slight perceived racist remark. A case in point, the American media leapt all over a detective's racist slur in the double murder trial of OJ Simpson. It is largely cited as a case in which race played a major contributing factor. Similarly in the beating case of Rodney King, the mere fact that four white policemen committed this act of police brutality provoked outrage. If Cafferty's remarks had been that racist in nature, as the Chinese government said, there would have been a far greater outcry.

Beijing calls on-air comments on Hu's government as racist

The New York Times reported that the Chinese government is furious with a remark by CNN commentator Jack Cafferty and demands that CNN and him to apologize. I watched the offensive remarks in question on Youtube.com. Frankly I am not sure that Beijing is exactly in a position to demand an apology. Beijing's attempt to mutate his words into an insult of the Chinese people is very badly done. There are legitimate points in his remark like his reference to the growing US trade deficient with China, the importation of poisoned pet food and the lead coated toys. China enjoys a growing trade surplus with the United States. That is a fact. China exported pet food with deadly chemicals in them a few months ago. That is not in dispute. Finally, several foreign governments discovered that a popular bead toy manufactured in China had lead in them. That is true. Also, China is Wal-Mart’s biggest supplier. However, certain portions of his rant are not true such as companies pay Chinese factory workers a US dollar a month.

Then he proceeded to uses the words thugs and goons. Here lies the problem with Beijing's demand for an apology. It is plainly obvious to me that this comment was levied solely against the Beijing government given Wolf Blitzer's question was about China, not about his opinion of Chinese people. Obviously, Beijing cannot separate a racist comment like Kelly Tilghman's on-air remark about lynching Tiger Woods versus an attack against the government. The Chinese Foreign Ministry is unaware that in democratic countries like the United States, Canada and Western Europe, one's patriotism is not questioned merely because one opposes the current government or administration or party. There are plenty of Americans who despise and hate George W Bush and believes that he and Dick Cheney should be impeached; that does not mean that those people are unpatriotic.

This is a classic case of over-reaction. Beijing touts its righteousness by calling every insult against the regime an insult against the Chinese people. This is as outrageous as Saddam Hussein calling every insult against him as an attack on the Arab world. CNN and Cafferty should not apologize merely because the Chinese government claims it represents the feelings of the Chinese race. The Chinese Communist Party that calls itself a government certainly does not represent the Chinese nation, much less the Chinese race. As far as I know, Taipei has not weighed in on this comment. The Chinese Communist Party once said that for citizen to be patriotic, one must love his Party (also known as the Chinese Communist Party). In order for one to love his Party, one must love his leader. In other words, China is a country where dissent is forbidden.

Cafferty should obtain China's human rights report from the State Department, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and go to China. He should stand up at a Foreign Ministry press conference and identify himself before challenging the Foreign Ministry spokesperson to proof which part of his comments are slander. He should raise the detention of Shi Tao, Ching Cheong and Lu Gengsong as proof of his standard for the behavior of a Draconian regime. Beijing publicly accused the Dalai Lama of inciting violence in Tibet. Yet they offered no proof of his involvement. The last British governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten was brilliant when various Chinese leaders called him a thousand year sinner by asking Beijing to proof which part of his reforms for Hong Kong's Legislative Council was in violation of the Basic Law and the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Beijing's only response was in effect Patten knows which articles of the Basic Law has been violated and should amend his reforms accordingly. In Patten's five years as governor, Beijing never once tried to point out what was wrong with his democratic reforms of the Legislative Council.

Cafferty only needs to notify the State Department of his intent to go Beijing and his itinerary so that the US Embassy in Beijing is aware of his presence in the event anything should happen to him. I would be hard pressed to believe the Chinese government would deny him entry into the country and to a Foreign Ministry press conference. If Beijing refused him entry, he could announce on CNN's The Situation Room that Beijing's only interest is waging a war over the airwaves. It would proof that Beijing's belief that the international media should be censored in the same fashion Beijing has censored the local media.

Why are armchair generals blaming Greenspan?

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan told the Financial Times that he and the Federal Reserve could not be held responsible for the residential mortgage meltdown and the subsequent credit crunch merely because they lowered Federal Funds rate to 1 percent. The truth is Greenspan is right in general. In 2002 and 2003, the US economy faced a recession and serious deflationary pressures as a result of the tech bust and the telecom meltdown. After 2000, there was three major stock bubbles burst in quick succession, namely the dot-com, the IT and telecom. The terrorist attack on 11 Sept. 2001 only exacerbated the recessional pressure. As a result, Greenspan lowered rates at times at 50 basis points increments.

The bust of the housing bubble is largely the result of creative financing to put people who were priced out by the rate hikes in 2004. In other words, if the interest rates were what it was six months before the perspective homeowner purchased the house, the homeowner could have afforded the mortgage in question. Unfortunately, they missed the opportunity to buy a house at the lower rate. Naturally, banks were only to happy to accommodate the prospective homeowners by introducing teaser rates and the options adjustable rate mortgage (or ARM). The idea of ARM was to give those homeowners the faint hope against hope that Greenspan might lower rates to something more favourable. Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve hiked rates for 17 straight meetings at a quarter point increments. New homeowners soon found themselves unable to keep up with the adjusted monthly payments. Worse, any attempt to refinance the home loan meant refinancing at a higher interest rate.

To compound the current mortgage crisis, banks decided to effectively price in more homebuyers by lowering the minimum down payment requirement from 20% to 0%. Twenty years ago, banks would simply not loan homebuyers more than 80% of the home value. This meant homebuyers had to put down 20% or have a FHA or veteran loan before asking the bank for money. A sole purpose of a FHA or veteran loan was a guarantee by the Federal government that the homebuyer in question could meet the 20% down payment requirement before going to the bank. Hence the Federal government was liable for whatever portion of that 20% down payment the homeowner did not make. This was the underlying reason why the American economy was much more resilient when the savings and loan blew up during the administration of the elder George Bush. In an attempt to take over the FHA home loan business without the FHA restrictions or requirements, banks created mortgage products that allowed them a slice of that pie. Over the past fifteen years, the FHA has becoming increasingly redundant with banks doing their business and in the process lowered the minimum down payment to 0%.

As everyone knows, the Federal Reserve has two mandates, namely to grow the economy and fight inflation. It is a contradictory responsibility when one thinks about it. In order to grow the economy, the central banks need to keep interest rates low. In order to ensure stable prices or fight inflation, the central banks need to raise interest rates to tighten the amount of money in the economy. Throughout the 70s, 80s and most of the 90s, when unemployment rate fell to 6%, consumer prices in general goes up because it becomes more expense to hire people because wages went up. This was one of the principal reasons why 6% unemployment rate was considered full employment in those decades.

Was the mortgage crisis preventable? The answer is to a limited degree, but it is totally unrelated to the interest rate. Remember the problem was not how long did Greenspan leave the Federal Funds rate at 1 percent, but what financial institutions choose to do to make a buck after Greenspan raised rates. If Greenspan choose to raise rates earlier say by four to six months, this crisis would still have happened, but only earlier by that amount of time. It is preventable if banks or financial institutions like GMAC or Countrywide actually did their homework like assessing the perspective homebuyer's cash flow and his or her liabilities before lending the money. More importantly, if banks and financial institutions stayed discipline by offering conventional mortgage products and insisting on a maximum leverage of 80% of the value of the collateral, this crisis would not be as severe as what it is now. At the end of the day, the financial sector probably had no choice, given that Wall Street and the investor community had priced so much to perfection and the power of major shareholders to dictate the CEO's job security or, as it might be, insecurity. As for the sub-prime mortgage mess, it was unavoidable if banks or financial institutions choose to lend money to people they know will have trouble in re-paying the loan.

Although Greenspan ran the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve was not the regulatory body overseeing bank lending policy or their risk comfort level. Greenspan's role in the creation of this mess is at worst minimal and at best probably non-existent. Remember, this is defense is purely premised on the inevitability of the raising of interest rates and the financial institutions would have still opted to pursue the course of the action they chose to pursue. However, Greenspan's decision to actively defend his record at the helm of the Federal Reserve is questionable. He should allow other economists to respond to the proverbial Monday morning quarterbacking that is now taking place.

Zimbabwe Elections: Someone must be joking that the votes have not yet been fully counted.

Last Saturday, Zimbabwe held both parliamentary and presidential elections. In the past, the election commission announced these results rather promptly as Pres. Robert Mugabe and his party were the winners. It is also worth noting that Mugabe allowed foreign press and observers into the country to monitor these elections as a sign of his pledge to free and fair elections. For the first time in his 30 years in power, Mugabe banned foreign press coverage and barred international observers from overseeing these elections. As if these elections were not already suspect as it currently stand, the opposition announced that the election commission had printed nine million ballots for a country with a population of only six million. I mean what are the election commissioners thinking? Fifty percent of the population would make a mistake in their choice of president and members of the next parliament. That is a highly unlikely proposition.

As of this entry, the election commission has released the parliamentary results in fashion that could only be described as water torture slow. As for the presidential election, the commission has not announced a date for the release of the results. Many local polling stations have already finished posted the local results for both parliamentary and presidential elections. The opposition has already taken pictures of the posted resulted to ensure that, in the event of any post election violence, the results would not be lost. One has to begin to suspect that Mugabe is using the approximately three million extra ballots to cook the results in his favour. The opposition already said that they believe the dead has voted. The last time I heard the dead rose up from their graves to vote was in 1960 in Chicago. It is obvious that, if the dead did any voting, they voted for Mugabe.

This got be a joke. Who would vote for Robert Mugabe given the current economic environment in Zimbabwe? The annual inflation is 100,000 percent according to IRIN News Services, an agency of the UN Office for Co-ordination of Humantarian Affairs based in Kenya. The Times of South Africa reported Tito Mboweni, the South African central banker, has been seconded to Zimbabwe to bring the latter's super hyperinflation under control. Mboweni said that his inflation target for the medium term was somewhere between 200,000 to 300,000 percent. The insane part of Zimbabwe's economic woes is that one US dollar is currently worth almost 30,000 Zimbabwe dollars. The paper currency is practically worthless when the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has announced that it would print for all intent and purposes 10 million Zimbabwe dollar bank notes. Frankly, I am still surprised that the exchange rate between the Zimbabwe dollar against the greenback has not yet reached the hundred of thousands of dollars.

The greed of the Mugabe's government for power and the economic collapse of Zimbabwe are shocking. The economic woes began when Mugabe announced the redistribution of farmland held by white farmers without compensation. The notion of redistribution of farmlands was so unpopular that the majority of people rejected the proposal in a referendum by 55%. Mugabe initially agreed to abide by the will of the people, and then Chenjerai Hunzvi, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Liberation War Veterans Association, invaded the farmland in question. Parliament turned around and approved the very motion that was so soundly defeated in the referendum. The moment the government seized those farmlands and gave it to the black population, agricultural output stopped. This virtually no food in the supermarkets and many Zimbabweans are forced to scavenge for nutrition. That was clearly a move to appease the most militant and extremist fractions within the black community.

Right now, it has gotten to the point of being a joke that the international community, especially the African Union, has not yet began calling for Mugabe to step down. The refusal of the British Foreign Office not to pre-judge these results is laughable. In the event that electoral commission announces Mugabe as the winner, is the British government indirectly suggesting that they would respect the outcome? Frankly, I expected a much stronger response from Zimbabwe's formal colonial masters then what we are getting.

Dumb idea: An Arranged Tour of Tibet

In an attempt to appease international pressure to allow foreign journalists into Tibet and Lhasa in particular, Beijing decided to organise an arranged tour for foreign journalists. The arranged tour was to highlight Beijing's claims of the destruction of Han Chinese properties in Tibet by the local ethnic rioters. Apparently, Beijing's organised tours of Tibet backfired once foreign media reported Beijing's strictly guided tour in their piece. This leads me to ask, what are they thinking?

First, Beijing publicly accuses the exiled Dalai Lama of inciting violence in an attempt to promote Tibetan independence. As the political pundits for the truth-o-meter at Politifact.com would say, it is nothing short of a pants-on-fire lie. If Beijing understood anything about Buddhism or most religions around the world, it seeks to promote greater harmony and peace among humanity and not to incite violence. Furthermore, the Dalai Lama has spent his life promoting peaceful dissent and non-violent resistance like Mohandas Gandhi of India. Like Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, the international community at large has recognised the Dalai Lama as an vivid advocate for peace. In fact, unlike Beijing's depictions, his message has been for many years about peace. Therefore it is utterly illogical and utterly hypocritical for the man to secretly incite violence in his homeland.

There had been protests around the world outside Chinese diplomatic and consular facilities by the local citizens condemning Beijing for their heavy handed handling of Tibetan monks' street protest. There are already world leaders preparing to boycott the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony. Athletes are under pressure individually to boycott the Games. The international outcry may very well lead to greater political consequences than what Beijing may want. Instead of an Olympic Games like the 1988 Seoul or the 1992 Barcelona Summer Games, Beijing may find itself hosting a very divisive event like the 1980 Moscow games, which Western nations boycotted in retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Furthermore, Beijing should keep in mind that international community would not tolerate law enforcement actions that border ethnic discrimination and indiscriminate round ups of the Tibetan minority like those in the former Yugoslavia, principally Bosnia Herzegovina. China and Russia supported the defense of internal affairs during the Bosnian Civil War. The West and later the world recognition of Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia and Bosnia Herzegovina as independent nations is proof that the world is free to judge the behaviour of national government in times of internal strife. Beijing may not wish to recognise the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, but the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state by the West should be a strong proof that Beijing's right to claim sovereignty over Tibet is purely at the discretion of the international community and cannot be enforced by military might.

What I am trying to figure out is has Beijing learned anything from the breakup of Yugoslavia? The policies of Slobodan Milosevic in Bosnia and Croatia were to disenfranchise the local ethnic groups by quietly shipping more Serbs into those republics. Beijing is sending Han Chinese into Tibet to effectively merge the local Tibetan population with the Han Chinese; thereby reducing the local ethnic Tibetan population. Right now, the information and news the international community knows of the situation in Tibet is principally from Chinese Party officials sent to govern Tibet. Many of those officials are Han Chinese, not Tibetans. Does Beijing actually believe that no one would notice what is going on? Or does Beijing believe that information control is tool to prevent such information from ever becoming public? Did Beijing learn anything from the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre? In a world of near instant communication, Beijing is a fool to believe that the world would never learn of what is going on within its borders.

Also, have Beijing forgotten the Western political philosophy of self-determination. In the 19th Century, statesmen in Europe believe that a nation state for each ethnic group would ensure peace across the continent. China is one of the few empire states that have survived into the 21st Century. I believe the break up of the Soviet Union into its constituent republics in 1989 and the dissolution of Yugoslavia were a good thing for world peace. I have more than once said that Iraq is an artificial state that cannot survive without a military strongman like Saddam Hussein. This viewpoint is reinforced by former US Secretary of State James Baker when he believed that the removal of Saddam Hussein from power might precipitate a civil war within Iraq. Given what has happened in Iraq today, George Bush the elder was correct in not going to Baghdad and arresting Saddam Hussein for his Kuwaiti atrocities.

Frankly, Western nations should consider strengthening its ability to find out what is going on in different parts of a country like China by establishing consular missions in more remote regions of a country like Tibet for China. A strong consular presence in potential hotspots like Tibet would ensure that national or regional governments would not undertake unreasonable law enforcement measures in the absence of foreign media. I believe that a stronger consular presence in Tibet in the future would ensure that foreign governments would have an independent local source of information than relying on the official diplomatic or media for news and assessments.