News of the Weekend (March 22-24, 2008)

Tibetan "violence" exposed as a Communist plot: Communist China is insisting that they are fighting a violent riot in occupied Tibet. That caught the attention of Ruan Ming, former speechwriter to the late Party boss Hu Yaobang, who explained how the cadres staged the event (Epoch Times):

"The demonstration on March 10 was meant to be peaceful. You can see from the pictures that the demonstration was all monks," Ruan explained.

"The CCP arrested some of these monks and killed them. The killing angered some young Tibetans. By March 14, the Tibetans could no longer stand the killing of innocent monks and protested."

From that provocation came all the claims of "violence in Tibet."

Ruan also believes this was part of a plot to influence the Dalai Lama to resign (which he threatened to do last week), in order to move him out of public view. Meanwhile, the cadres kept up the charade with a list of "most wanted" (BBC and CTV), and labelled the Dalai Lama a terrorist to boot (Times of London). Sadly, the combination of Communist propaganda (Epoch Times) and a refusal to let anyone outside the regime report the truth (Epoch Times and NRO - Media Blog) has combined to give the Chinese people a badly distorted picture (Washington Post).

Yet not everyone is swallowing the propaganda. Several intellectuals - including one under house arrest in Beijing - "appealed to the Chinese government Saturday to admit that its policy of crushing dissent in Tibet and blaming the ensuing violence on the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, was failing" (Washington Post).

Persecutor-in-chief for East Turkestan is also in charge of Tibet suppression: Michael Sheridan has the scoop in the Times of London, which includes how the Party has decided to wipe out native cultures in the occupied nations with massive ethnic Chinese migration. Abrahm Lustgarten has more on that subject in the Washington Post.

More on the Tibetan crackdown: More Westerners are calling for the Communists to let the truth come out in Tibet, including the German Foreign Minister (Washington Post), several Canadian MPs (Epoch Times), and thousands of Britons (BBC). A monk in Gansu talks to the BBC. The Epoch Times has the latest from Lhasa. The Communists are also using the long arm of lawlessness to take down pro-Tibetan websites (Washington Times).

Amidst the blood in Tibet; boycott talk hits the Olympics: The president of the European Union called upon EU member nations to consider staying away from the Communist Olympiad if the crackdown in Tibet continues (CNN). At least one on-line poll shows that Canadians agree (Bourque), and Lorne Gunter of the Edmonton Journal certainly does, but few others are rising to the challenge, for now (Chicago Tribune via Detroit Free-Press).

Meanwhile, the Olympic Torch route began with a protest (BBC and CNN); sponsors of the Communist Olympiad are facing more pointed questions (Washington Post); and the cadres are even considering forcing the Olympic to tape-delay to prevent damaging footage (MSNBC).

Enlightened Comment of the Day: Robert Kagan (Washington Post) and Matthew Continetti(Weekly Standard) each have terrific pieces on what the Tibetan crackdown has revealed about the Chinese Communist Party. But for the other, both would have won easily. As it is, it's Continetti by a nose.

Ma Ying-jeou wins Taiwanese Presidency, calls for "peace treaty" with Communist China: The most acceptable face of the Kuomintang Party overcame the party's terrible recent history to score a landslide victory over Frank Hsieh, the candidate of the ruling and anti-Communist Democratic Progressives (CNN). Ma promised to "work towards a peace treaty with Beijing" (BBC), but "only if China removed missiles pointed at Taiwan" (although that wouldn't solve the issue of long-range missile from the heart of the mainland). Mroe troubling is his plan to "shelve" (Washington Post) the question of Taiwan's future and his apparent belief that Hu Jintao is as interested in peace as he is.

Communists step up the persecution of Falun Gong: Naturally, the "stability" and the "Safety of the Beijing Olympics" were the justification for the crackdown (Epoch Times).

On "another Chinese province": David Ignatius makes some bad mistakes in this Washington Post column on Stalinist North Korea, but he does show how the Stalinists have once more resorted to stonewalling the United States - this time on revealing the extent of their nuclear cooperation with Bashar Assad.