American Buddhist Net

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Talks with China over censorship have reached an apparent impasse and Google, the world’s largest search engine, is now “99.9 percent” certain to shut its Chinese search engine, the Financial Times said on Saturday.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

This is getting interesting. Whatever else, if Google leaves there will be a strong reaction in China. Dirty politics aside, the nub of this issue is an open Internet versus a closed one. Google is favored by better educated Chinese, who will probably still be able to access it on servers outside of China. Ultimately, I don't think China has a chance in this fight if the US plays its cards right, which so far it has been doing. Clinton's strong statements about Internet freedom last week and the FCC's proposals today greatly enhance Google's position. Clearly, these statements were made with an understanding of the Google-China dispute. I have had almost nothing but problems with US foreign and domestic policy for a long time, but this all looks fine to me. The Chinese model for the Internet has essentially no argument in its favor. At the same time, the US cannot easily abandon its own basic principles of free speech, so the two are natural adversaries on this front. Add to that the power of an open Internet on China's population and you have another reason for the US to take the position it has. Progressive Chinese should want China to lose this one. Ultimately, this matter comes down to technology, and that is one genie no one - not even China - will be able to put back in the bottle. ABN

Hanoi - Vietnam has officially allowed exceptions to its longstanding two-child policy under certain circumstances, a government official confirmed Wednesday. A new decree details seven scenarios in which couples are to have the right to a third child, Nguyen Thi Thanh Huong, director of the Hanoi Population Department, said.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

BEIJING — One of China’s top Internet regulators warned bluntly on Friday that any move by Google to stop censoring its Chinese search engine would be “irresponsible” and would draw a response from Beijing.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

The issue, simply stated, is Internet freedom or not. The Chinese model of a closed and restricted Internet is horrible. I hope they utterly and completely fail. I hope Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Europe also fail in their short-sighted and cowardly attempts at censorship. Right now, the USA is the only major voice in the world supporting an open, uncensored Internet. Americans should be paying attention to world trends and domestic ones and never allow anyone to abridge our freedom of speech. Do not give an inch on this matter because all of world history stands in the balance. ABN

BANGKOK - THOUSANDS of supporters of deposed Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra gathered near ministry buildings in Bankgkok on Saturday to rally against the government, sporting their signature red shirts.

Police said about 12,000 Red Shirts had arrived at a stage rigged up near a Bangkok bridge, while some 50,000 protesters had passed through military checkpoints set up at entry points to the capital throughout the day.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Tibetans living in-exile in India staged a protest demonstration outside the Chinese Embassy here on Friday to mark the 51st anniversary of the Tibetan Women's Uprising Day which came two days after an uprising led by the Dalai Lama against Chinese rule in 1959.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Tokyo - The Japanese government has come under fire for a tuition-fee-waiver programme approved Friday, which critics say would discriminate against Korean students if North Korean schools in the country are excluded. A House of Representatives committee approved the bill to waive educational fees at public high schools. The bill would also allow private schools to be granted 120,000 yen to 240,000 yen (1,330 to 2,660 dollars) per student depending on the student's household income.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Chinese netizens have found a creatively flamboyant, sometimes off-color, new way to voice their discontent about the social dilemmas in China—with less chance of raising a red flag. They have invented slang Internet expressions in both Chinese and English.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

North Korea refused to accept a group of South Korean Buddhists for a visit on the same day that the South’s government authorized the trip.

The move is something of an about-face for the North, which had not earlier discouraged such trips.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Found this on a blog which had posted it for another reason. I want to step way back from current politics or religion for a moment. I am not posting this for political or religious reasons and not because of its explicit meaning, but rather because the video seems so revealing to me about the depth of human violence and passion, be they religious or otherwise. The speaker - girl or young woman - seems to me to be like a Jungian archetype of tribal values, group values. How many times in history have crowds been roused by a young face like this speaking so passionately? ABN

by Gavan McCormack

For a country in which ultra-nationalism was for so long a problem, the weakness of nationalism in contemporary Japan is puzzling. Six and a half decades after the war ended, Japan still clings to the apron of its former conqueror. Government and opinion leaders want Japan to remain occupied, and are determined at all costs to avoid offence to the occupiers. US forces still occupy lands they then took by force, especially in Okinawa, while the Government of Japan insists they stay and pays them generously to do so. Furthermore, despite successive revelations of the deception and lies (the secret agreements) that have characterized the Ampo relationship, one does not hear any public voice calling for a public inquiry into it.2 Instead, on all sides one hears only talk of "deepening" it. In particular, the US insists the Futenma Marine Air Station on Okinawa must be replaced by a new military complex at Henoko, and with few exceptions politicians and pundits throughout the country nod their heads.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

America talks the talk; Pyongyang walks the walk. At least according to Kim Jong Il's domestic propaganda machine. In countless posters displayed in city centers, North Korean resolve is contrasted with American spinelessness. "If we say we do something, we do it," a towering Korean People's Army soldier shouts in one poster as he slams his clenched fist down on the continental United States. "We don't utter empty words!" Other posters depict North Korean fighter planes and missiles destroying the U.S. Capitol while helpless American soldiers, mere spindly, insectlike creatures, are hoisted effortlessly on bayonets or squashed under missiles.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

VIENTIANE - Low water levels on the upper Mekong River have renewed criticism over hydropower dams China has erected on the waterway's upper reaches. Environmental groups and governments have pinned blame on China's inward-looking water management policies, although some experts say the real culprit is unusually severe drought conditions in southwestern China, northern Thailand and Laos.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

As Mongolia struggles to overcome a devastatingly harsh winter, international development organizations, including United Nations agencies and the World Bank, are urging Ulaanbaatar to take a hard look at reforming the country’s nomadic agricultural practices.

Since January, temperatures have hovered around minus 30 degrees Celsius and snow has covered 90 percent of the landlocked nation. Known locally as a "dzud," the harsh winter weather has killed over 3.3 million head of livestock and has threatened food and fuel supplies in rural communities, aid agency representatives say.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

The mass protest intended to paralyse Bangkok and topple the Thai Government began at exactly 12.12 pm today with a huge round of applause followed by the sound of gongs and Buddhist chanting.

Anti-government protesters from the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship gathered in their thousands at strategic locations around the country ready to start streaming toward central Bangkok.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

SYDNEY : More than 90 authors, including Nobel winner JM Coetzee, have condemned China for refusing an HIV-positive Australian writer entry to the country for a government-sponsored tour.

Robert Dessaix revealed his health status in his application for a visa which was refused without explanation.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

The government approved the planned visit by a group of Buddhists to North Korea later this week to discuss the holding of a rally for Buddhists from the divided halves in the North, an official at the Ministry of Unification said Thursday.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

A straw poll taken by The Irrawaddy following the publication of Burma's election law indicates widespread indifference and pessimism about the election planned for this year.

Out of 300 people polled in Rangoon, 232 said they opposed the law because it placed restrictions on political parties. Only eight said they were satisfied with the law, while 60 withheld comment.

A typical reaction came from a Rangoon civil servant, who said: “We are not interested in it because we can do nothing.”

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Chinese security forces have stepped up a crackdown in Tibet's capital Lhasa, two years after protests marking a failed 1959 uprising erupted in deadly violence, the police and reports said Thursday.

The "strike hard storm" began earlier this month and is aimed at cracking down on Tibetan independence activities and ordinary crime, a policeman at the city's Niangre precinct told AFP by phone.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

In his annual address from exile in India on the 51st anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against China, he said: “They are putting the monks and nuns in prison-like conditions, depriving them of the opportunity to study and practise in peace.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Hong Kong's top lawyers and Chinese officials are trading blows over the legality of a new campaign for democracy in the former British colony that frames an upcoming special election as a de facto referendum on political reform.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Hundreds of Tibetans, including Buddhist monks and nuns, Wednesday remembered their forefathers' uprising against the Chinese annexation of their land in 1959 and chanted slogans for a free Tibet in Kathmandu despite a massive police crackdown and arrests.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Burma opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi faces expulsion from her own party and is barred from standing in polls this year under the military junta's new election laws unveiled Wednesday.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

The Dalai Lama has lashed out at Chinese authorities, accusing them of trying to "annihilate Buddhism" in Tibet as he commemorated a failed uprising against China's rule over the region.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

BEIJING (Reuters) - Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama will appeal to the elite in the Chinese-run Himalayan region in a speech on Wednesday, inviting them to visit communities of exiled Tibetans.

In an address marking 51 years since he fled into exile after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, the Dalai Lama will also pledge he and members of his government-in-exile will not take any political positions if and when the Tibet issue is resolved.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

WASHINGTON—Two years after protests against Chinese rule erupted into rioting in the Tibetan capital and spread across western China, sporadic talks between Beijing and envoys of the Dalai Lama appear to have achieved little progress.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Chinese authorities sentenced a popular Tibetan singer to 15 months of 're-education through labour' after he released an album containing lyrics deemed political, US-based Radio Free Asia said Monday.

The broadcaster said it obtained a copy of a document declaring that Tashi Dhondup was sent to a labour camp in his home province Qinghai because he had 'violated laws' by singing songs in support of Tibetan independence and Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

BANGKOK: Thailand will imprison and hand out heavy fines to any migrant workers who attend mass anti-government rallies in Bangkok this weekend, the labour minister said Tuesday.

Migrants would be subject to a five-year jail term and fines of up to 100,000 baht (US$3,100) if found among protesters loyal to fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra who are due to gather in the capital on Sunday.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

...The Department of Health wants to make tobacco use one of the criteria for deciding what age rating to give a film, a move that could mean some animated movies are out of bounds for children.

"Smoking (in movies) has a much worse impact on health than sex and violence," the department said in a statement posted on its website.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

Only 81 days are left for the promulgation of a new constitution that will consolidate Nepal as a secular republic.

The deposed king, accompanied by his wife, the former queen Komal, went to the Bankali forest area adjoining the revered Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu where a Nepali baba who has followers in both India and Nepal is conducting a maha yajna.

LINK TO ORIGINAL

LHASA, China — The troops with automatic rifles patrolling the Tibetan quarter of the capital of Chinese-controlled Tibet are as ever-present as Buddhist pilgrims.

LINK TO ORIGINAL