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

Mai 1968 en Paris

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

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© 2008