flickering pictures

Last night I stumbled upon one of the most chilling and touching print journalism pieces I’ve seen in a while, courtesy of the Guardian‘s Tania Branigan. It is painfully human and will make you want to cry. Here’s an excerpt from the article: Tenderly, she eased the clean fleece over her little boy’s hand and [...]

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From the BBC‘s irony department: Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say. The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile. Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning. But then some [...]

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National Geographic reprints the amazing first-person account of Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian soldier who escaped from a British P.O.W. camp in modern-day Pakistan and fled to Tibet, where he ended up as one of the Dalai Lama’s tutors. The article chronicles his extended stay in Lhasa, and originally ran 53 years ago. Here’s an excerpt: [...]

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A Chinese freighter brimming with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and three million rounds of AK-47 ammo has docked at the South African port of Durban, with Robert Mugabe’s landlocked fiefdom in Zimbabwe as its intended final destination. The shipment is especially disconcerting because Mugabe has refused to release two-week-old election results that would almost certainly see [...]

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The Washington Post reports that protests over Tibet may lead the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to cancel the worldwide torch relay ahead of the Games. As torchbearers jogged through streets in London and Paris, they were met with everything from boos and jeers to pro-Tibet activists who chose a more direct approach, managing to grab [...]

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About a month ago, I wrote about the growing movement to boycott Beijing’s Summer Olympics, on the basis of its support for brutal regimes in Sudan, Myanmar and elsewhere — and its none-too-pretty human rights record at home. I was convinced that a boycott is a bad idea and still am, but pressure is building [...]

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Saddened by both rioting Tibetans and the resulting Chinese crackdown, the Dalai Lama has threatened to “resign” as Tibet’s political leader if his followers don’t abandon violence as an avenue of protest. From the BBC: “If they choose violence as the means to achieve their political ends then the Dalai Lama cannot lead that movement,” [...]

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It’s not unusual for independence movements to count violence and intimidation among the tools at their disposal. So-called liberation groups from Spain to Sri Lanka, from Northern Ireland to Chechnya, determined at one point or another that it was acceptable to harm innocents and destroy property if it brought them closer to their nationalistic dream. [...]

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A construction worker in Ningbo, China was buried alive when a ditch wall collapsed today, and amazingly was saved by his hard hat and Buddhist meditation techniques. The Times of London reports: The rim of his helmet had, by chance, trapped a tiny pocket of air around his face. Mr Wang knew that if he [...]

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When I decided to start this site, I told myself that I wouldn’t be yelling out chest-thumping opinions on subjects I know nothing about. I’ll really work to avoid the tired old “injustice this” and “fascist that,” and instead I’ll try to just put some interesting ideas out there, perhaps letting you know what I [...]

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