Watch the Olympics Opening Ceremonies at Agnes Scott This Friday
August 4, 2008 | 1:10 pmCarl passes along this invite…
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Have you ever heard of Falun Gong? Here is a wiki blurb- Falun Gong or Falun Dafa is a spiritual practice founded in China by Li Hongzhi in 1992. It has five sets of meditation exercises and seeks to develop practitioners’ hearts and character according to the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance.
So…this started out as a wholly peaceful movement in which, some would say, the Chinese people were looking for respite from the immorality of rampant greed and no holds barred economic “progress” which, most enlightened folks on this blog are probably already aware, is causing catastropic environmental damage in that country. In April 1999 over ten thousand Falun Gong practitioners, at Chinese Communist Party headquarters, Zhongnanhai, silently protested beatings and arrests in Tianjin. Two months later the Chinese government, led by Jiang Zemin, “banned” the practice and began a crackdown and “massive propaganda campaign.” Since 1999, reports of torture, illegal imprisonment, beatings, forced labour, and psychiatric abuses have been widespread. 66% of all reported torture cases in China concern Falun Gong practitioners, who are also estimated to comprise at least half of China’s labour camp population, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, and the US Department of State respectively. In 2006, two high-profile Canadian lawyers published an investigative report concluding that since 1999, the Chinese authorities have systematically executed Falun Gong practitioners to harvest their organs for the burgeoning transplant trade.
The propaganda machine tries to label it as a cult as the Chinese Communist Party sees it as a threat. You know..the Christian Church could also be considered a cult. Or the Muslim faith, or Hindu faith, or Buddhist faith, or Wiccan faith, or whatever. Personally, I am not into religious beliefs…I think religion is doing things to help people, animals, the planet…helping a prisoner or hospice patient, remembering your wife’s birthday, taking time with your kids, planting a tree, putting a wedge in the military industrial complex..this is religion. Sitting around some building feeling all warm and fuzzy about your ’shared beliefs’ so that you feel secure in this world isn’t religion. But nonetheless…I respect people for where they are at in thier evolutionary stage. As the Chinese Communist Party becomes more and more powerful in the world and the US becomes more and more indebted to them (who is carrying that deficit?) , you may look at thier view on Falun Gong quite skeptically.
I won’t even get into the atrocities happenning in Darfur under Chinese Communist Party rule. I say…enjoy the Genocide Olympics. My TV will be turned off for this one. I don’t understand how a communist country with documented human rights abuses is allowed into the World Trade Organization (thanks Bill Clinton) or gets the Olympics bestowed on them. Mind boggling.
oh..and its got nothing to do with the Chinese people. Its the CCP. People are always try to lump them together. Is like being against the military industrial complex policies of Israel and people saying I must not like jewish people. Ridiculous.
Great article in the Boston Globe today:
http://www.boston.com/sports/other_sports/olympics/extras/olympics_blog/2008/08/jianli_yang_why.html
I am unable to boycott China effectively since almost everything is made there, but I do try. I am however boycotting the Olympics. I was told the opening ceremonies were very spectacular. I started to watch some video online out of curiosity, but could not continue. All i could think of was the harvesting of organs from live Falun Dafa practitioners. It is unfathomable to me that the US went into Iraq later saying ‘well, they may not have had weapons, but the leader was really bad anyway’, yet we do not interfere at all with the CCP’s rampant violation of civil liberties. Falun Gong is not a political force. It is a personal cultivation method that poses 0 threat to the government. Why the fear CCP? Pansies…
I saw part of the opening ceremony as I walked over to a friends house and there was a group of people watching it. It was mind blowing. Spectacular. I must say, the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) really put on a nice display. Its all about the image you see. So much emphasis on the image to hide the reality of what is happening in that country.
Did you see the story about the little girl lip synching at the open ceremonies because the CPP decided the real girl with the amazing voice was not as pretty?
Did you see the story about all the business owners losing money on the main thouroughfares in Bejing because the CPP put up miles of false walls and storefronts to hide the appearance of the existing structures?
Yes…it was a good show. And unfortunatetly, I bet alot of the world bought into it.