10 April 2008

Who? Which? Where? reflections....

This is certainly not the easiest topic to write about, but it strikes deepest in the heart.


ZENish eyes have now seen violent manifestations during week, an uprising from the Tibetan 'revolution' that began an active track in March, passing through the prism of a series of Olympic Torch parades.


London, Paris, San Francisco...


London: where the Anglo–Saxon 'rule of law' and Magna Carta changed the world...


Paris: 'égalité, liberté, fraternité': the revolutionary calls to arms that overturned Marie–Antoinette's husband's Monarchy... interesting to note for posterity, that the alleged 'protester' in the midst of these French Parisian police, allegedly is a Paris City Council member... Will this get him re-elected? (photo from fellow blogger Notarazi (who's welcome to borrow any of mine)...


San Francisco: Where our weary world spent long months in negotiating and drafting our political world's Charter of the United Nations...


Now it comes to a procession inflamed, yet again, what are we seeing?


The passage through London, perilous; the scenes we saw there were a preview of the other two cities to come, only weather and backdrops changing from the multiple phalanx of steroidal police and security protection, the vibrating colors of yellow and red Tibetan flags, waved in hands of protesters, and surrounding the blue and white sweatsuits of Chinese security.


In London, in Paris, in San Francisco: we're witnessing English citizens or residents, or French or Americans, being beaten bloody by police overreaction.


French police with matraques look no different than a San Francisco policeman with his nightstick.


If these words aren't pointing out what has ZEN Central in a whirling mental merry–go–round; this is it:


Peoples in the freedom lands are showing the world their liberty of expression, in getting beaten by State Actors, as they protest against a repressive Chinese regime, whose action against Tibet includes the Tibetan monks and population... getting beaten by State Actors.


That means the free–world protesters are generating a perfect propaganda tool for the Chinese State, who can turn these images on their head.


“Live from San Francisco, we're watching the US government brutally repressing dissident terrorists right on the Golden Gate Bridge! The USA, which has proclaimed itself the Champion of Human Rights...”


Or was that “Now from the land of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, we're watching as French governmental Police brutally repress an uprising of violent young French people...”


And “Across the Tower Bridge, English government attacks a vicious, disobedient faction that is terrorizing its citizens...”


Does this seem a script from the Twilight Zone?


___ç-ç*******/ ZENmud \*******ç-ç___
© 2008


09 April 2008

Five Rings around China


Another statement regarding Tibet?


Tibet is not abstract; it is no abstraction – at ZEN Central.

Tibet will forever be etched in our minds, again, for what has transpired these last few weeks, but at ZEN Central, Tibet remains forever
Ya Tebya Lyublu–land... a timeless land far away from daily 'Westerners'. Tibet may be one of the unique places in peoples' hearts, around the world, simply from its mountainous ranges that create the sparkling sunlit diamond highlighting our planet.

Braised emotions of a heart in love, launched by pure flames, shivers now in the absence, the cold, (cold itself being the physical state essentially derived from an absence of heat) an eternity without.

Yet in Tibet, through air and waters that feed its peoples, hearts turn minds to the great preponderance of our times.

Aliyas live there; the beautiful souls we've all seen in photos, Asian beauty refined in highland, thin–air regions. Sharing with Nepal, and Kazakhstan, the most majestic of mountain ranges on our blue planet, and 'mountain people' everywhere know of 'the spirit' that rises in the winds above the trees, pulling snowribbons across mountainous peaks and then blushing with the romantic change to the night sky.


Aliyas, are why the world cries for Tibet in these weeks. It cries for Tibet, surely, because Tibet is the most 'far–away' feeling in nearly any Western soul.

Free Tibet!

Is the rendered plea, from a world finding itself somewhat shell–shocked.



Are we all overkilled by Iraq? We are struggling: with sad, daily Bettincourt alerts, sub–prime-oriented nervousness, the world's population in individual agonies, from globally-warmed years without end, and becoming habituated to massive snow storms, spring or summer floods, and Cat. 5 hurricanes on the natural side, while our relatively recently–devised, globally interwoven commercial system finds itself on a teetering edge of global strategising. That edge fronts the verge of virgin 'temporal territory': the future of one blue-green planet, itself facing unprecedented climactic and tectonic economic shifts.

How then Tibet?

Why now, after fifty long years of Chinese occupation, a Dalaï Lama–nated lifetime, have all conscious forces found Tibet now, here, today? Simple – without a trace of blame or rancune in these words, the failure was straightforward:

No one probably thought, years ago at the private, IOC (International Olympic Committee) meeting some years ago, that their decision to award the 2008 Summer Games to Communist China, in the abstract hopes of improving domestic Chinese human rights (which now may be only marginally below those found in the USA, in the Bush/ post-WTC decade), would induce a conjunction between the growing economic force of Chinese participation in the global economy, the contentious problem that is Tibet, and a traditional pre–Olympian global marathon torch parade, with...

the spring of forty years of 1968 anniversaries?

The Spring of 1968...
the year that began with LBJ
renouncing his second term while
'the troops withstood the Tet Offensive
The Grenoble Olympics:
heavenly Peggy Fleming and
avant–garde skier Jean–Claude Killy
Martin Luther King
and the riots across America
as America's ghetto–poor reacted to
another Republican/Hoover assassination
which started withStudent protests, including againstthe war in Vietnam and ended with a call, by
De Gaulle for anticipated general elections
Robert F Kennedy
whose pooling June blood
reflected four billion tears
, and fears –
for children

Mexico City
the fortieth Anniversary of
the first modern politicized Olympics, as
Tommy Smith offered hope–filled eyes his
beautiful silent black–gloved expression

Democratic Convention
in Chicago 1968, Students for a
Democratic Society
brought rage, and
enraged the pure white hatred of a mob city's
police force

What we've seen in the last week completes the first ring, bringing the world back (or forward?) in time, to that mentality we first saw some forty springtimes ago. China finds itself within a ring of world attention: attention that it planned for, perhaps, but how?

Within the ring of protests the wide world around, generated by the ring-road passage taken by the Olympic Flame parade(s), China reacts or acts knowing that reasonable people may finally be awakening to the conscious loss of Tibetan freedom, to the moral crime of extinction of that land, a land full of Aliyas...

This the
first ring: it shines with the common passion of 'free' peoples, even if certains of those amongst the free, have instituted protest movements often promoting world–shaking changes, yet coming home with little more than another poster–on–a–stick – to recycle organically.

Around the world, our second ring is that one which Athletes and journalists alike, are seeking, as well as VIP politicians or sponsors. If they are the best, or the widest read or viewed, or hold the most influence, they will receive, with sufficient training, requesting or conniving, their tickets to Beijing.

Athletes are qualifying, in regional or world championships, maybe national ones, straining without doping (are they clean now? One hopes... eternally). Is there an Olympic Athlete alive, who has not become aware of Marion Jones, her fall into Hell, or that of her racing teammates, whose inadvertent ignorance or benign neglect allowed her to cheat her way, and cheat away, the medals they won (and maybe now have) lost: together?

Senior journalists are already comparing notes; who's covering which events, becoming thoroughly familiar themselves with new Chinese laws specially conceived to focus and restrict while offering 'open world access' to worldwide attention into their large, totalitarian land mass. Voyage plans to Beijing are this spring's cocktail party conversation already... that's not abnormal. What IS anormal will be the loud cry of silence as journalists meet 'stony, stoic citizens' by the hundreds of thousands.

And politicians? Their dance is different, now that we find them highly exposed, on the virtual tightrope walk they offered themselves, in endorsing the an economic global expansion, so that Chinese production contributions have become nearly every major world industry's 'minority partner'.

They need a long pole to balance themselves, while trying to stay aloft, tugged between the opposing gravitational forces of domestic protest regarding
Lyublyu-land, our beloved Aliyas in tears, under an oppressive regime, and the entrenched economic statistics which somehow reflect 'Humanity's Better System', yet cry for no political interventions that create ripples in our sub–primed, over–indebted economies.

The Golden ring that one seizes, in the attempt to attain Gold Medals; ringing telephones telling journalists what they should or will transmit to us from China, and politicians, whose hats are 'in the ring', or not, as they balance the courage to face domestic dissatisfaction, or Chinese economic retribution, sabotage or worse: ruptured contracts?

The
second ring will take the world to China, and will present China to the world itself. Yet these rings, may turn into links of a chain... twisted tightly around Tibet. Or, like the ring in the nose of a bull, perhaps some of these large contingents feel as if they are being led, as unwilling propagandists contributing to the deception that is China's response to 'FREE TIBET'.

The third ring finds China amidst its true 'Equals': other States.

Let us acknowledge that, in our system of States, they themselves are comprised of politicians, or royalty, through whose hands the strings are pulled. The cords that control their relationships are accorded democratically, dictatorially or through inheritance, from citizens or subjects. States still exist within the western system of International Law, as entities unto themselves.

Thanks to the International Olympic Committee's choice of Beijing in 2001, Most Countries are now, as was blithely stated by the French State, 'preoccupied' by the nature of China's handling of the unrest in Tibet.

States are as embarrassed, perhaps due to the economic ties that China bequeathed to them in these last twenty years or so: everywhere Diplomats look, they are surrounded, in a ring that is distinctly uncomfortable: the sad truth is that China has become the woman trapped in a toilet stall, whose door falls off as the public watches, themselves too embarrassed to end the spectacle. This describes the 'insult to China', watching the peoples' leaders reactions to its 'domestic unrest' (in their words, and for which ZENmud Central is neither apologizing nor condoning), in a world that ignored Rwanda, 'protested' Vietnam in 1968 and after, and found itself oddly without voice of any virulent force, as Bush led a paranoiac nation across oceans to install its global energy protection systems, as much against competitors as against 'uncooperative exporting rulers'.

The
third ring, then, is the inner circle comprised of Diplomats.

Many represent small poor countries (as there are Ambassadors from every voting State, one thinks how few (29? 32?) are members of the OECD), sometimes corrupted by birth and/or station, these privileged attendees are often protected by acting on their States' availability to 'vote' in the manner best serving their rulers, Presidents or Queens. How are they reacting now, wondering whether the energy of the year of “Eight-Eights” will affect their own State, and perhaps their personally–derived roles therein?

States took up the cry of 'Terrorism' universally, realizing much more quickly than Bush's domestic supporters, the effective transformation of 'Freedom fighters', the 'oppressed' or the 'opposition', into a one–size–fits–all box. And many States are certainly anxious to side with China; it 'has the mojo rising' in the future Century. The inner ring finds it likes what it sees, in China, conveniently omitting thoughts of the backlashes to come. As countries spouted 'terrorism' for every internal, domestic 'unrest' after Bush, so now comes China, reinforcing this trend in our turbulent times.


The fourth ring encircles China.

It, as a country, may not be able to completely inoculate its peoples against the infection Freedom provides.

Singularly (in
grosso modo terms) linguistically isolated, culturally carrying a proud history of relatively non–violent mono–culturalism for over five thousand years, a citizenry now impressed (NB: British 'Navy sailors' were once 'impressed' into serving in the King's Navy...) into non–deviation for four generations, supporting the cultural weight of over 1.5 billion like–minding concitoyens et concitoyennes; what percent of these relatively naïve peoples (and admit, are we not all mostly ignorant to the closed–door political decisions, which seem to aide most those who seem least to need such help?) want to break open their self–imposed, violently–induced groupthink survival methods?

Think of the cells of a body: think how the proliferation of infection from the few viral components that enter lungs, may destabilise an entire body's billions of cells...

It only takes the right incubatory conditions, the proper temperatures and proximity to nutrients. The
fourth ring is designed to filter 'pure happiness' for 'pure Olympics' and offer 'pure interactions' with 'pure Chinese peoples'.

It should not be surmised, that China will not be infected by this disease, spread through the contagion of though, expressions of feelings that feel so foreign to right–thinking Chinese peoples.

Is the
fourth ring that which China fears most?

The fifth ring, is that which created this circus itself: the Olympic fields, courses and events.

China is racing against time, as do ALL Olympic cities, inevitably, to prepare teams, facilities, transportation access and provision, and of course, anti–doping control.

It bears mention, that China existed in that same shadow world, where formerly States condoned with a wink (the same 'wink' that drove Bicycling throughout the Festina days and afterwards), the doping of certain classes of Athletes long ago, in support of the world's Cold War politics.

East Germans, Russians, Americans: no country or bloc was shy to the doping techniques that evolved in lockstep with Global confrontation or active 'non–alliance'. Gold medals earned, were medals that deprived 'the enemy' of glory. The capacity to shield extended into laboratories themselves. One remembers back to the Italian CONI scandal in the 1990s, which involved the discrediting of a laboratory senior official, whose investigations had discovered that the principal 'architects' of Italian anti–doping efforts were in fact at the root of a vast network that 'allowed' certain beneficial treatments to Italian Athletes.

Which state–of–the–art is China establishing, in a land that sponsors organised hacking systems financed by its Government or Military, to 'control' doping analysis, results management and rapid, real–time adjudication of the rare positives that should inevitably come forward?

The Austrian cross–country skiing team, at the Turin Winter Games, established an illicit and elaborate in–house self–injecting blood packing system, perhaps the biggest coordinated event in this young Century's sporting history. It reeked of those two revelations in cycling's stormy decade, which first concerned the Festina cycling team, as well as the latest scandal regarding the contemporaneous T-Mobile (then Deutsch Telekom) revelations, which came to light last fall?

Within the
fifth ring, the Olympic ring, China again has a tight rope to walk, assuring inscrutably its capacity to render fair doping controls.


That alone could be an Olympian Ring of Fire...


It remains unknown, if this summer's Olympics, the strife in Tibet, the awakening Spirit of 1968, the focus on Beijing, the events, the travelling hordes, are going to 'go party with THE Party', on their terms, or if are they going to CRASH the Party...

And there, amidst all the attention, are the peoples of the region, an awakening part of the world, who those in the West would best heed their collective calls: for an equality of recognition.

A FREE TIBET is an honourable end, yet prudence dictates that the means used are perfected, away from anarchy.
At ZEN Central, we would advocate that millions of people come watch the passing Olympic Flame, wherever and whenever it appears, and do so in Turning Away, so that peaceful images of saddened people may ignore the flame's passing into a land that has not yet awoken from its nightmare-filled control structure.


Wherever she walks now, and with whomever, Aliya is forever loved, and her silence remains the only artifact from the only woman ever to invite ZENmud to come to Tibet: to be with her, to grow, in life together, a tentish, tipi-zoidal commitment, a thought that was so immensely adored...

ya tebya lyublyu (still), Tibet, peace

___ç-ç*******/ ZENmud \*******ç-ç___
© 2008


04 April 2008

KICKING ASO (and taking names later)

HOW TO KICK ASO...

(or: what if ASO gave a Tour and nobody came?)




The reasons for this ongoing war between ASO (owners of the Tour de France, Paris–Roubaix and the Paris–Dakar road rally, amongst other sporting events) and the UCI (the Union Cycliste Internationale: world Federation for all cycling events), now part of modern sport History, will be dissected, after the corpse is retrieved.


A 'dead body' alert ought to be disseminated now. There exists an excruciatingly real chance that the parties who comprise the 'family' of professional cycling are being literally torn in thirds, or fourths, depending on your perspective. Whether the UCI offered a solution with its ProTour concept, or created a certified monster (if you're Patrice Clerc, managing director of Amaury Sport Organization, this is your sermon), a 'mutiny' for the Bounty has begun. Bounteous amounts of money pass hands in the world of cycling, sponsors for teams with annual budgets up to 40 million Euros, teams paying entry fees to event organizers, and those juicy, fat TV rights?


How are they contributing to this major sport implosion?


One other question, to mix into our recipe: Is France tactically advancing a national mission to 'return cycling to France'?


No matter what conspiracy, machination, nefarious alliance or business proposition exists, no matter how ASO tweaks the knobs that fine–tune certain teams and riders, and their associations, to an ASO 'frequency' (read: brainwashed or blackmailed), there's a way that the UCI could kick ASO butt.


Rival Tour.

No France.

EuroTour 2008.
(maybe 2009? And maybe "World Champions Tour" or...)


10 million Swiss francs to the one man who can ride three weeks, +/– 3600 km in nineteen days, London to Athens, or Prague, or both...


UCI rules.


Over fourteen times the winner's purse. Performing a doping control on each and every participant, as a minimum, of once per two days.


No more 'we are better' chauvinism.


And, perhaps back it up with a Laboratory that actually can perform proper laboratory analysis, AND stay open without closing for vacation in the middle of one of its biggest annual contracted testing periods.


It's not yet been determined whether fans, and to be fair, we must only talk about NON–French cycling fans, are loyal to the Tour de France because the race is: a) French, b) the best in the world, c) both, or d) where the Money goes...


If a team, or its star, could win ten times the winnings at the Tour de France, would it be the greatest stage race any more?


The answer, my friends, depends on whether the 'best' racers in the world want to 'lose' money – earning opportunities.


Arrogance of ASO?


Kick 'em where it counts: in their wallet. If ASO thinks they as a Company, are more important that Cycling as a Sport, either Cycling acquiesces, or it takes the issues to a greater level.


This can happen...


The alternatives are not pretty.


___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___
© 2008


02 April 2008

CHINA takes over the world...


The new century began last month... did you notice?


The last century can clearly be laid to rest, in dishonour, somewhat, after the events that transpired in March.


Advancements in technologies, medicine, communication, travel and nearly every other field appear to have bettered the Human Condition. Only humans refused to advance, carrying the socio-philosophic burdens from ancient believes...


Yet, there was War, in that last century:

1914, 1939, 1950, 1960s, 1990, 2003

[the above list shows major conflicts in which US military involvement was at least influential, if not until long after the dates presented (WWI and WW II, notably]

But among those many technological and cultural milestones from the last century, whose advent and adaptation–forcing qualities also have spread anxieties and increased the ever–widening gap between Those–WhoHave, and those living without, are the rising dependence in certain economies, on Death Toy production.


And technology made War Ever More Horrible.


World War One, as between France and Germany, had started with a German cavalry officer's shooting of French Corporal Jules–André Peugeot, whose wound was fatal. If we accord credit to the story translated from a French magazine into the New York Times, this event from August 2, 1914, resulted in their mutual deaths ( Peugeot was able to return fire, dropping Lieutenant Mayer of the Fifth Mounted Chasseurs, Mülhausen): they died near each other, some 12 kilometers inside French soil from the closest Franco–Prussian border.

Take a couple minutes, to go back in time, to read the story of how the first French soldier fell (click on the photos, they should open in a new window):

Part two of the story:


The 'painting' of the Twentieth Century had several broad brushes, colors of the World Wars, tints from the Cold War, hues of Recessions Depressions and Famines; a Oil Century of Oil–based globalization and transformation, framed through the climate change that parallels the Peak Oil phenomenon.


If you lived it, you know it.


Our planet, which sustained less than a billion before OIL, now tries to sustain nearly 7 billion souls, and OIL, which moves food to them at any point on the range of the economic scale, is soaring unidirectionally.


Culturally, the Western moving picture visual arts have reflected natural beauty, and cultural horrors, on the same basis and in an infinity of repetitions. Love is love, and war is hell, hopelessly exclusive and mutually intertwined; politicians and the War Merchants feeding off of the amassed cultural critical mass, nationalism breeding It, racism breeding It, religions preaching It.


So many people, so many peoples, are ready to stop the wars, yet it, War, has become the beast in the closet, now too large to contain.


Pacifists, having failed to pacify the violent factions in society, seek balance and cannot. Pacifists bringing Zen to might–makes–right personalities, is like a calm man whose nervous cleanliness–obsessed girlfriend makes his heart–rate increases a subject leading to medical assistance. A family or two appear, from different cultures, and their names are forever linked to to the transition between That Century and This one.


An attack in Bill Clinton's first year of his Administration, brought one of these family names into the spotlight. Usama bin Laden, mastermind of the first World Trade Center attacks. Former hero of the CIA, for his early efforts against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.


Fast Forward, with a detour.


Reading only a small sampling of the documentation generated after the September 11, 2001 WTC and Pentagon airplane attacks, one is not ignorant to the miraculous, 'innocent' relationship revealed, between the 'families' of Carlyle Group. One of America's younger defense contracting empires, built through acquisitions and consolidations, its purchases of US and international corporations created an amazing global death–toy empire under guidance not only from its former Chairman, Frank Carlucci, but the make up of its 'Senior International Advisors', which have included John Major, James Baker III, and George H. W. Bush and members of the bin Laden family.


So look back to that, more naïve era, and leave the innocence for others. There is little doubt that the history books will record these last 15 or so years, in a much different light than that which we see now.


Osama bin Laden is THE radical Muslim leader, where there were at least three at the turn of the Millennium (with Saddam Hussein, and Yassir Arafat), however Bush the Lesser (George, now President, is son of the first President Bush) has done away with two of bin Laden's contending rivals.


Very few parts of the world, geographic or political, are more stable than ten years ago, with maybe Western Europe as an exception. Bush and his neocon hacks have Rambo'd their way into a Middle East warzone of their own Hollywood starstruck creation, and it is likely he will 'leave office' without serious prosecution of his myriad crimes.


And all that happened in the 'Last Century', while with Tibet and China, the Olympic Games and calls for a boycott of those athletic events, we see the world paralyzed by its mutual commercial ties to the largest country, the fastest growing economy, the Central Statist theory gone steroidal.


Nations are not prepared to boycott these Olympics, not yet.


The idea that we, the people who as individuals cannot stand independently for a free Tibet...


“Free Tibet”


A most noble idea, lost to the world in the decade in which the author ZENmud was born: Tibet has been an administrated 'province' of China for some fifty-eight years.


“Free Tibet”


Some words: this thing that unites peoples around the world, when conscious of life beyond their own daily routine.



It stays afloat, this concept, as would a child holding the string, staring at a kite launched above their eyes... Tibet...


With colors that dance in the brightly lit sky, wind–like currents raising Tibetan kites in hearts everywhere.

China?


Some Westerners think China "slept" through the horrors of the Twentieth Century (domestically, of course this can't be true: our point veers out into the world scene, of course: we're ZENmud). At ZEN Central another theory has been developed since the late 1990s. China, a culture with thousands of years of history, monolithic since the Dynasties, lived through epic times, hazardous times, and seems to have learned from its auto–generated history course, the value from...

Waiting


Building a State, boosting its early population with a rank–and–file of mostly docile, agrarian or trade craft–oriented citizens, who may have learned through intimate connection, or word–of–mouth, what happens to Chinese who question authority from outside the activities of the Party; through Mao, and the long line of followers, China stood for uniformity, as a benefit for the administrators of the largest State on Earth.

Patience of China


Mice can only move elephants through fear; the State that is China is bigger than any elephant. By building a military force and a State police organization, the relatively minimal structure of the Central government was able to amplify its impact and create the persuasive, sometimes repressive organizations that kept the beast moving in a fairly linear path.


Opening China, Nixon's most legitimate and audacious official act, was a political ploy whose measured impact remained focused on the reaction that this manifested from the USSR. Today, China makes news with killer toys, and Tibet.


Taiwan, long a fiancée of the West, especially during the long Cold War, and ever since, has voted in a pro–China candidate
as President.


Is Taiwan the announcement that this new Century has begun? Are the endless recalls of children's items 'Made in China' a sign of disdain by Chinese companies to their commercial commitments? Or is there a benign disregard for the safety of the children who are end–users of these mass–produced products?


Whatever George Bush and his lackeys taught to his followers, in the USA, the sadder lesson was that passed from the President of the United States to his fellow Chiefs of State. If the world now calls all political opponents 'Terrorists', this is a direct, and yet unanticipated result from a carefully–orchestrated internal US Republican mission, a reprisal for Nixon, a reprisal for its failure to destitute Clinton from his office.


The USA taught an entire planet how to blueprint repression, legislate fear, orchestrate chaos and reap the political advantages that usually are associated with higher and constant feelings of loathing or nationalism, sometimes in combination. Now America watches in feelings of trepidation, as media sources remind its citizens that others have learned the lessons of Neoconservatism.


And China, five times more populated than is the USA, an economic whirlpool that sucks up growing percentages of planetary financial resources, facilitates the relocation of globalization to its economic free zones, and ignores to some extent, the environmental, labour and safety laws in promoting its growth.


Seven years ago, this writer discussed 'World War NEXT'... with a friend from Senegal... Our conversation began, he as a diplomat with the UN, myself a middle–level international civil servant/consultant. Our focus began with Africa, ignored since the Cold War, violent with the trappings of power that are now associated purely with extractive primary resource industries: oil, primarily. Europe and the Americas were negligent in not finding the way to connect with Africa, and show it a way to provide that which went instead, to a part of the world that had proven itself to be more scholastic–achievement oriented: Globalization had found Eastern Europe, South America, Central America, Eurasia, Asia and not... Africa.


A new Century usually begins when the old Order is replaced. Thus World War One had ended the Nineteenth Century, and began the War Century.


The American Century = The War Century?


World War NEXT, as this author described it on a pavement in the final days of our innocence, tainted innocence of the post–Cold War world, was about to be won without weapons, as China took in companies, made its industrial partnerships, entered the energy economy as more than a large 'Third World' customer, and flooded the world markets with a constant increase of products.


It is happening, we are witnessing, and the Opening of this Summer Olympic pageant will carry more imagery than that.


Boycotts?


That call (barring the Law of Unintended Consequences (link) being brought into the equation) will probably not be heeded. Rallying around the banner of 'Human Rights', governments and NGOs are finding their voices again, after the uselessness of cries against the injustices promoted under George Bush, aka George the Lesser.


That the world hears and cries for Tibet, reinforces the mythic beauty of this world heritage territory. That the world has been successfully anaesthetized against the injustices of Iraq's destruction, through US belligerence, intransigence or obstreperousness, its transparent deceits against its own people and partners, using Depleted Uranium with impunity, is regrettable. Not so much against the fatigued, but more in focus against the source. The US Foreign policy mission under Bush' watch, is replete with crimes against Humanity, war crimes, and corruption.


Seven countries have already, or are now approaching total anarchy: Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Sudan, Lebanon and the Palestinian lands.


These countries have all suffered from the world–taming, erroneous Defense policy of the US government. The US Energy Policy may be beneficiary, or the secret driver, of US Foreign and Defense Policies.


China is watching, and China can make the USA pay - unlike any other country. Holding nearly a trillion dollars of US Treasury debt, China soon has to play its trump card, or lose it. It could afford to lose a trillion dollars, or a portion of that. The bad poker moment, is that China knows that the USA will not provoke that country, host to these Summer Olympics, to play that hand.


The USA is holding a very long position on Chinese futures, perhaps metaphorically. It cannot boycott the Beijing Olympics. Dr Jacques Roggé understands this.


When will you?


The sad fact of today, more than any other single problem of our times, is the instability of global geopolitics, unilaterally achieved by a hypergrowth–oriented US defense budget, and its procurement and deployment.


Over 780 US military 'installations' exist around the world, outside its borders. That is nearly four per country, including our Guantanamos, our German airbases, our Okinawan bases, where the Japanese government cringes in nearly annual anticipation of the next in a never–ending series of rape and assault scandals. It includes our Italian bases, where training flights end with ski area lift cables cut by jet fighter wings, killing nearly twenty people. It includes Afghanistan, Iraq, England, and the whole mothership–Empire–building lot.


China's Empire is still young, but bigger. It is the repository for growth – return on investment, and it is not afraid of what would happen to the collapsing world who's bought and sold their very commercial souls to be an early, get–rich–first component of that boom.


Put another way, China will have little problem if it is left with an empty Nike factory, on its own territory, after Nike's home market: the United States, is no longer able to sustain purchase levels from its corporate star. China will have the facility, the know–how and the resources, to sell running shoes after Nike folds.


And World War NEXT is probably going to be won without guns.


___çç*******/ ZENmud \*******çç___
© 2008