57 Rules meet One Rule

The Torchlike the rules. The Torch has its own rules. No 1 Rule is, Liberty.

China Issues 57 Rules
For Olympics Visitors
By GEOFFREY A. FOWLER and SKY CANAVES
June 3, 2008
HONG KONG -- The Beijing Olympics organizing committee issued a detailed handbook of ground rules for foreign visitors to this summer's Games. The 57 points address behavior from public drunkenness to political statements, a message that China won't be letting down its guard during the Games.

BEIJING 2008

In recent months, the government has reported crushing several attempted terrorist plots to disrupt the Games. It has increased supervision of foreigners in China by tightening rules for issuing visas and checking up on foreign residents already in the country.

Most of the guidelines issued Monday, phrased in a question-and-answer format -- and only in Chinese -- are restatements of existing laws and regulations. They stipulate that foreign visitors to China should carry passports and other official documents at all times. Visitors who plan to stay with friends or relatives in Beijing must register with local police within 24 hours.

Some of the guidelines are less weighty. Entertainment venues have to be closed between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. Another guideline reminds visitors that "it is prohibited to sleep in public places," including airports, train stations and parks.

On sensitive issues such as public speech and protest, the rules offer no guidance beyond the vague prohibitions the government has offered in the past.

At major public venues, behavior that "disturbs order" is prohibited, the rules say. Inside Olympic venues, it is illegal to display "any religious, political, and ethnic slogans, banners, and other items."

People hoping to hold marches or demonstrations must apply to the police for permission, the rules say, but they don't explain where such protests will be allowed, if at all.

The Beijing Olympics organizing committee wasn't available for comment.

International human-rights groups and some athletes' organizations have expressed concern over the ability of participants and spectators to speak freely during the Games. In April, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said that "freedom of expression is something that is absolute" and is shared by athletes. But he also said that athletes are guests in China and would have to abide by Chinese law.

Write to Geoffrey A. Fowler at geoffrey.fowler@wsj.com and Sky Canaves at sky.canaves@wsj.com

Burme Cadre Jr twists the deal, UN notices deal is worthless

U.N. Says Myanmar Is Forcing
Cyclone Survivors Out of Camps
Associated Press
May 30, 2008 8:02 a.m.
YANGON, Myanmar -- Myanmar's military government is forcing cyclone victims out of refugee camps and "dumping" them near their devastated villages with virtually no aid supplies, the United Nations said Friday.

Eight camps set up earlier by the government for homeless victims in the Irrawaddy delta town of Bogale were "totally empty" as the clear-out continued, Unicef official Teh Tai Ring told a meeting of aid groups.

"The government is moving people unannounced," he said, adding that authorities were "dumping people in the approximate location of the villages, basically with nothing." Camps were also being closed in Labutta, another delta town.

An estimated 2.4 million people remain homeless nearly a month after Cyclone Nargis hit the country May 2-3. The government says the storm killed 78,000 people and left another 56,000 missing.

Centralizing survivors in the centers had made it easier for aid agencies to deliver emergency relief since many villages in the delta can only be reached by boat or over very rough roads.

Aid workers who have reached some of the remote villages say little remains that could sustain the former residents. Houses are destroyed, livestock have perished and food stocks have virtually run out. Medicines are nonexistent.

The Unicef team leader in Myanmar said some of the refugees were "being given rations and then they are forced to move," but others were being denied such aid because they had lost their government identity cards. There was speculation that authorities didn't want "a refugee mentality" to set in, with camp inmates dependent on aid for a long period of time.

Terje Skavdal, a senior U.N. official in Bangkok, Thailand, said he couldn't confirm the camp closures but that any such forced movement was "completely unacceptable." "People need to be assisted in the settlements and satisfactory conditions need to created before they can return to their place of origins," said Mr. Skavdal, head of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "Any forced or coerced movement of people is completely unacceptable."

Aid groups say Myanmar's military government is still hindering foreign assistance for victims of the cyclone, while the junta has belittled the aid efforts. Foreign aid workers are still awaiting visas, and the government is taking 48 hours to process requests to enter the Irrawaddy delta, aid groups said Friday. They said the International Red Cross was waiting for permission to send 30 foreign staffers into the delta.

"We urge speedy implementation of all agreements, on access, visas and use of logistical assets," Mr. Skavdal said. "We need to see more relief experts, including (those) from the (International Red Cross), getting into the delta as soon as possible without bureaucratic hindrance."

While he said there have been "promising indications that the government is moving in an overall right direction," Mr. Skavdal added that the real test remains implementation on the ground.

While welcoming millions of dollars from the international community for cyclone relief, Myanmar lashed out at donors for not pledging enough. State-run media condemned donors for pledging only up to $150 million -- a far cry from the $11 billion the junta said it needed.

Copyright © 2008 Associated Press

Sharon Stone mentions Tibet and karma and the Cadre cringes:

What is Dior, Tibet, Stone, Cadre, karma, Sichuan and earthquake all doing in a news item. Torch befuddles the news. The Torch goes to the top of Everest under guard, and the Indian plate jumps 23 feet into the Eurasian plate. No connection. Sure not. Still. The Cadre is spooked.

China embarks on quake diplomacy
Published: May 29 2008 19:41 | Last updated: May 29 2008 19:41
For Sharon Stone, the Sichuan earthquake was karmic retribution. For Wen Jiabao, China’s premier, it was a moment to show the Communist party’s human face. For Japan, it has provided a small, but genuine, opportunity to lay to rest some of the ghosts that still haunt Sino-Japanese relations.

Beijing’s decision to ask Japan’s Air Self Defence Forces to fly relief equipment into Sichuan is rife with symbolism. Not since 1945, when the Japanese withdrew from China after 14 years of brutal expansionism, will a Japanese military aircraft have landed on Chinese soil. China’s seizure of the moment is laudable. So is Japan’s enthusiastic response. Less than two weeks ago the idea had seemed unthinkable. Then, Tokyo sent rescue workers to pick through the rubble of Sichuan. But they flew on commercial aircraft, via Beijing, losing time.

Natural disasters have a way of accelerating existing trends. Earlier this month, Hu Jintao, China’s president, made a remarkable visit to Tokyo in which he praised Japan’s peaceful postwar rise and suggested it could play a bigger international role. The remarks, broadcast live in China, may have come as a shock to many citizens fed a diet of Japan’s wartime barbarities and supposedly continued untrustworthiness.

Mr Hu has correctly gauged that dragging up history to shame China’s most important neighbour is counterproductive. It damages Beijing’s aspiration – evident in its high-level meeting with Taiwan – to be seen as an emerging power willing to join the global order.

The symbolism of Japanese aircraft arriving as saviours rather than aggressors could yet backfire. Internet chatter shows how raw the events of six decades ago still are. “Yesterday their planes were dropping bombs,” says one post. “Today they are giving a little kindness to confuse the Chinese people.” Nor is it certain Beijing’s shift is irreversible. The suspicion remains that, if things get tough domestically, the Communist party may play the anti-Japan card to shore up support.

Yet, rather like the 1995 Kobe earthquake, Sichuan will go down as a turning point. Kobe exposed Japan’s lamentable preparedness. It laid the groundwork for a response to its economic crisis. The Sichuan quake has jolted China just as it was meant to be celebrating its Olympic triumph. It has provided an opportunity to re-evaluate everything from dam construction to the importance of civil society and the role of the Communist party in people’s daily lives. Now it is helping to exorcise wartime ghosts. Some good can come of this tragedy yet.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

We have to pretend that the Beijing Cadre couldn't order her released tonight. The Torch lifts a brow.

The Burma Cadre Jr works for the Beijing Cadre. Same as Kim Jong Il and the gang in Khartoum, Mugabe in Haarare, and any other lowbrow bully they can collect cheap. The Beijing Cadre has the hygiene of sludge. And is not without shame.

Suu Kyi detention extended
YANGON, May 27 - Myanmar’s military junta extended the house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi by another six months on Tuesday, a government source said.

The official, who asked not to be named, said a government officer had gone to the Nobel laureate’s home to read out the extended detention order in person.


Oxford-educated Suu Kyi, 62, has been under house arrest or in prison for more than 12 of the last 18 years.

The widely-expected move is likely to dismay Western donor nations which have pledged tens of millions of dollars in conditional aid since Cyclone Nargis hit on May 2, leaving up to 2.4 million people destitute.

The military, criticised for its slow response to the disaster which left 134,000 dead and missing, has slowly opened the isolated Southeast Asian nation to foreign aid and workers.

But the generals have also shown no sign of relaxing their iron grip on the country.

Earlier on Tuesday, police arrested 20 youth members of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) trying to march to her home in the former capital, opposition sources said.

A Reuters reporter saw at least six police trucks, a prison van and a fire engine parked near the NLD headquarters before a ceremony to mark the end of the latest phase of her house arrest.

Suu Kyi’s latest stretch of detention started ”for her own protection” after clashes between her supporters and pro-junta thugs near the town of Depayin on May 30, 2003.

However, her formal house arrest under a state security law did not start until Nov. 27 of that year. It was renewed once for six months, and has since been renewed every year on or around May 27.

The last time Suu Kyi was released, in 2002, she drew huge crowds on a tour of the country, a reminder to the generals of the huge sway the daughter of independence hero Aung San still held over Myanmar’s 57 million people.

The NLD won more than 80 percent of seats in a 1990 election, but was denied power by the military, which has ruled the former Burma since a 1962 coup.

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Burma Cadre Jr relents not in the least: Assuaging the Beijing Cadre in small steps

The United Nations mania for the status quo ante results in a naked disgrace. A captive people can expect no help. Jaw jaw leads nowhere. Note that the visa section of the Burmese embassy in Bangkok burned down in a mysterious fire less that 12 hours after Moon announced a breakthough in Rangoon.

Nervous junta opens door to relief workers
By Amy Kazmin in Bangkok
Published: May 26 2008 23:36 | Last updated: May 26 2008 23:36
Foreign relief workers began filtering into Burma’s devastated Irrawaddy delta on Monday as aid agencies tested the ruling military junta’s contention that it would allow a big international effort to help 2.5m victims of cyclone Nargis.

Unicef, the United Nations children’s agency, said it had received permission over the weekend for six foreign technical experts to work in the delta, which had been off limits to foreign aid workers.


The World Food Programme also had several international staff, including a logistics officer, travelling to the region.

However, a foreign doctor and sanitation specialist working for a British charity who attempted to travel to the delta without permission were turned back 50km outside Rangoon.

Most international aid agencies are seeking official sanction for their foreign staff to visit the delta so they can cross military checkpoints ringing the affected region. “A disorderly mass influx of internationals into the delta will make them very, very nervous,” said Andrew Kirkwood, country director of Save the Children.

Aid agencies are cautiously optimistic that they will finally be able to deploy foreign technical specialists to support overstretched Burmese aid workers, who have been running the relief efforts for the past three weeks.

“Things seem to be progressing,” said John Sparrow of the International Federation of the Red Cross, which has 30 foreign technical experts in Rangoon. “We are hopeful that in the next couple of days we will get some news about what we can do and how we can progress.” Cyclone Nargis and the subsequent tidal sea surge killed an estimated 133,000 people and left a further 2.5m in need of food, clean water, shelter and medical care.

After three weeks of barring foreign aid workers from the delta, Senior General Than Shwe, the Burmese army chief, told Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary general, that “genuine” humanitarian workers could join the relief effort.

At a weekend meeting in Rangoon, global governments promised significantly to scale up their support for the aid effort if the generals allowed greater international access to the area.

However, the regime has still refused to permit US, French and British naval vessels carrying large quantities of relief supplies to airlift their life-saving cargo directly to needy survivors in the delta. France said it was “shocked”, but ordered its ship to neighbouring Thailand, where the supplies can be unloaded before being flown to Rangoon.

The UN estimates that about 1m people – 41 per cent of the 2.5m affected – have received some help since the cyclone, but mainly around Rangoon and not in the worst affected, hard-to-reach areas of the Irrawaddy delta.

UN officials say many survivors from the worst affected areas are migrating to the north of the country in search of help.

Dalai Lama: Wolf in Monk's Robe, speaks to the FT re the Cadre's confusion

The Old China Ways are broken and Marxism have failed. The Dalai Lama is not unclear. Non-violence has not worked so far. The new way is confrontation and resistance.


Gloom descends on Tibet’s exiled leader
By James Blitz, Lionel Barber and Lifen Zhang
Published: May 25 2008 19:16 | Last updated: May 25 2008 19:16
The Dalai Lama has long been renowned as an optimistic and beaming figure, one who regularly breaks into infectious laughter in his encounters with the international media. But when he greets the Financial Times on the latest stage of a European tour to drum up support for the Tibetan cause, we find the 72-year old Nobel laureate in a subdued, almost black, mood, about the plight of his 6m people.

As our 45-minute interview progresses – in a hotel next to Nottingham racecourse that must seem a world away from his home in exile in northern India – he reveals an increasing sense of resignation and frustration. He says his commitment to pursuing autonomy for Tibet by peaceful means is losing the support of the younger generation of Tibetans. He says at one stage: “I no longer care whether I’m losing influence or not.”

There then follows a shrug of the shoulders under his crimson robe as we ask him how he feels about the prospects for a homeland he has not seen since 1959. “I really feel helplessness that’s all. I have done my best. For half a century I have remained a homeless man with one goal. Has my moral response to help the Tibetan people failed? OK, so it’s failed. But then I am a Buddhist. Compared to ordinary politicians, my thinking is a little bit different.”

This sense of helplessness is understandable in these difficult days, and yet 2008 ought to have provided him with a golden opportunity to extract real commitments from China on greater autonomy for Tibet. Beijing is determined to hold a successful Olympics this summer – and many Tibetans had thought this would put pressure on the Chinese authorities to make concessions.

Yet the Chinese earthquake, which has claimed at least 60,000 victims, turned China from villain to victim overnight, drying up the international well of sympathy for Tibet. China had attracted a wave of criticism, after riots erupted in Lhasa in March.

The Dalai Lama acknowledges the point. “Of course, initially, people are showing more concern over the victims of this large-scale earthquake.”

But he insists that one of the reasons Tibet is now being eclipsed is that China refuses to allow the outside world into witness the crackdown on human rights.

“The re-education [of monks] is going on. That is quite clear. There are arrests in some areas. That’s why I have always said to the international community and to the Chinese government ‘Please let more people go there and see for themselves what is happening’.”

The Dalai Lama clutches at one strand of hope. In its determination to keep Tibet calm in the run-up to the Olympics, Beijing has agreed to hold talks next month with his representatives about the region’s future. The Dalai Lama is suspicions of Beijing’s motives, of course. “Is this only being done for the Olympics or is to deal with the real situation of Tibet?” he asks. “I do not know.”

Still, he has a range of requests, starting with fair trials for demonstrators arrested in the Lhasa riots. As far as a political settlement is concerned, he insists he is not seeking full independence for Tibet, just “realistic autonomy”. Nor is he demanding autonomy for a far larger swath of territory, encompassing the 4m ethnic Tibetans living elsewhere in China.

However, he insists China must give enhanced rights to Tibetans wherever they live. “What we are seeking is genuine implementation of the rights of the [Tibetan] minorities. They are facing of elimination of their culture and language. We are acting on behalf of all of them.”

Whatever happens at next month’s talks, tensions with the Chinese leadership will remain high. And yet he shows understanding for the conservative line on Tibet of the Chinese president and prime minister.

“I feel sympathy for Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao,” he says. “They have a country of over 1bn people with a lot of complications. There are still wounds from the Cultural Revolution and then another generation has the wounds of Tiananmen. There is a lot of corruption.

“China is today such a complicated country. The old Chinese tradition is much damaged and Marxism has failed. So it’s a very difficult period. As a result, the Chinese leadership is more cautious. That is realistic and it is understandable.”

However, he will not hide the hurt that he feels at the verbal ferocity with which China assaults him. “If some Chinese officials feel it is appropriate to call me a ‘demon’ or a ‘wolf with a robe’, that’s perfectly all right. But what about the millions of innocent young Chinese? If they really feel the Dalai Lama is a demon, then I feel very sad.”

Interview by James Blitz, Lionel Barber and Lifen Zhang

The Cadre threatens Siberia with cash. The Kremlin broods. The Torch awaits Moscow Games.

The future of Siberia is to become a trading partner to the Chinese markets, and while the Cadre can pretend it is just a customer, the truth is that it must buy Siberia. With that cash, Siberia does not need the Kremlin. Target date 2025, the trade war on the Kolyma.

Russia’s aim in wooing Mr Hu
Published: May 23 2008 19:06 | Last updated: May 23 2008 19:06
On his first foreign excursion since becoming Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev has turned east, to Kazakhstan and China, not west. It is no idle gesture. The choice of destination is clearly intended to underline a new emphasis in Moscow’s international ties. China is becoming a preferred partner, just as relations with the rest of Europe, and America, have cooled.

Yet even loyal Russian analysts are keen to stress that this does not mean a fundamental shift in priorities. Rather, following in the footsteps of Vladimir Putin, his predecessor and mentor, Mr Medvedev is signalling that Russia will be hard-nosed and pragmatic in pursuing multiple partnerships. Like Mr Putin, the new president has gone to Beijing, a large retinue of Russian businessmen in tow.

Both political and trade ties between Russia and China are much improved in recent years. Commerce is flourishing. Two-way trade rose 44 per cent to more than $48bn in 2007, a five-fold increase in the eight years since Mr Putin came to power. They have joined forces in the Shanghai Co-operation Organis- ation, bringing the countries of Central Asia into a security agreement seeking to counterbalance US influence in the region. Beijing and Moscow see themselves as part of a multipolar world: hence their joint condemnation on Friday of US plans for a missile defence shield.

It is a far cry from the bitter relations that prevailed during most of the cold war when, far from being close communist allies, the two regimes were at loggerheads. Today the two sides would like to present their new-found friendship as a fully-fledged strategic partnership. Yet it is more an alliance of convenience that disguises many tensions.

China is now lead partner in the relationship. In spite of the soaring price of oil and gas, Russia’s sales to China grew little more than 12 per cent last year, to $19.67bn, while China’s exports rocketed by almost 80 per cent to $28.48bn, giving China a trade surplus for the first time. Mr Medvedev wants to boost sales of Russian military equipment, aircraft and nuclear technology to redress the balance.

China clearly wants access to the massive mineral resources of Siberia to fuel its economic growth. But Russia has always mistrusted Chinese motives, and is cautious of too much investment, or migration, into its vast and under-populated eastern regions. Promises to build a new oil pipeline have yet to bear fruit, after a decade of negotiations.

Mr Medvedev’s next foreign trip will be to Berlin. Germany is still Moscow’s number one partner for trade and investment. Other western partners – including the US – will have to wait their turn. It is the Kremlin’s way of saying that it does not like to be taken for granted. Yet in the long run, Russia fears China far more than it fears its western neighbours. It has only ever been conquered from the east.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008