DRP's work for blog post 5

taking in to account the situation with Tibet and China, i still feel that china should be able host the Olympics. i say this only because i would feel bad for the people how have been training so hard over the years to compete in the games, to all of a sudden have there goal taken away. what i think needs to be done, is give individual athletes or countries the ability to drop out of the Olympics as a show of respect for Tibet. 

i would also like to comment about the use of non violence. i am a huge advocator of the use for non violence. And i have a great respect of the Dalai Lama for encouraging the protesters to use non violence. i think that it is the better way to work on resolving a conflict for a couple of reasons. first if the Tibetan protesters use violence the situation will continue to escalate and more and more people will get hurt, and nothing will be accomplished. secondly the use of non violence would put the protesters in a good light. it would show the world how important their cause is , if they acted a peacefully when faced with violence. 

Blog #5

There are a number of human rights issues being abused throughout Tibet. Since last week the Chinese government has sent its police to raid the homes of the residents of Lhasa in search of people who were involved in recent protests that happened throughout the city. Citizens of that region have reported that the police are pulling people out of their homes. Not to mention that the Chinese government is reporting that 13 of its citizen have bee killed because of the protesters. We than have Tibetan exiles stating that over 90 Tibetans have been killed by the police. This is only one of the situations going on between the people of Tibet and China. And since the beginning of China’s ruling, many of the Tibetans have gone through much worse. Tibetans have been locked up for no reason by the Chinese government throughout the years and many of them have been tortured while detained. In 1995 a report came out talking about how children risk their lives trying to cross the Himalayas just to get away from the Chinese government. Imagine the place where you were born and the only way you could live a decent life was by risking your own life just to get a glimpse of this freedom. Just after reading that report we see that the Chinese government has already gone against Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

According to Amnesty International, every week people are thrown into jails from protesting the government. The human rights group also states that the Chinese government will go into people’s homes and take away their pictures of the Dahlia Lama. Tibetans have been going through this treatment since the 1950’s and it’s shocking that the Chinese government is still getting away with this. If the UDHR was created to protect the universal rights of all individuals, why is it that people (Tibetans) are still suffering? How come nothing has been done to stop this chaotic treatment?

Beijing --Blog 5

The question of whether Beijing should be able to host the Olympic Games is a tough one, especially considering the cities that have historically hosted the games. Take for instance the 1936 Olympic Games, hosted by Berlin. At that time, Hitler and the Nazi’s had already been forcing human rights violations on the Jewish population for over three years, including stripping Jewish immigrants from Poland of their citizenship and prohibiting Jews from owning land. And Hitler was officially named Fuhrer in 1934, two full years before the games were hosted in Berlin. The fact that German Jews were consistently falling victim to human rights violations didn’t seem to affect the decision to hold the most important global sporting event in Berlin. Take any city that has hosted the games, and you could find some human rights violation that had taken place in that country. The difference between most of those countries, however, and the decision to host the games in Beijing, is that those problems were not occurring literally at the same time as the games. I think, however, that if we’re going to prevent one country from hosting the games based on their global policy, the decision of where to host the games would become a far more difficult one. For instance, the debate over holding the games in Chicago in 2016—whether you are in support of our position in the middle east, it would absolutely have to be taken into consideration that we did, in fact, occupy a country. America waged a very unpopular war, and that information would have to be taken into account. The war in Iraq is not the same thing as China’s violations toward Tibetans, but the difficulty with establishing any standard of this type is that it is all or nothing. There would have to be some kind of agreed-upon standard for what violations are bad enough to warrant stripping a country of the privilege of hosting the games.

Blog Assignment #5

This week, Tibetans began protesting the Chinese government’s occupation of their country. As we briefly discussed in previous class when we defined the term “ethnocide”, the Chinese government has occupied Tibet since the 1950s. Since this is an important human rights related topic in the news, this is an issue that our class should gain a general understanding of the situation in this region.

For next week, you can answer one or more of the following questions. The BBC has a great page about the history of Tibet that you could possibly use in your responses.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/guides/456900/456954/html/nn0page1.stm

What human rights abuses exist in Tibet?

How does the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights relate to the Tibetan issue?

How has the United Nations reacted to and addressed the situation in Tibet?

Can Tibetans freely leave Tibet?

Can exiles return to or visit Tibet?

How are human rights organizations spinning the Beijing Olympics in 2008? What does such an event symbolize?

Should China be able to host the 2008 Olympics given their human rights records in areas such as Tibet?

What has been international reaction and response (political, economic, human rights) to the Tibetan situation? Why have so few Heads of State and official governments supported an independent Tibet?

How has the Chinese Government reacted to foreign intervention or diplomacy on behalf of the Tibetan situation?

What has been the Tibetan reaction and response to Chinese occupation (non-violence vs. guerrilla warfare)?

Is adopting a non-violent approach a better way to work toward conflict resolution?

What organized efforts in India and the West exist to continue the struggle for a free Tibet? What can American citizens do to get involved ?

What is the function of non-governmental organizations like the International Campaign for Tibet?

Missing

Has anyone seen Blog #5 lying around?

Blog #4

The film is in some respects both a propaganda film, and also a documentary. And it is not to say, that a movie cannot be both. The film was clearly designed to make the Nazi's look powerful,prosperous, and intelligent. The music in the film was intended to be captivating, and powerful. The film is designed to make germany look like a utopian society. Yet the film did show actuyal Germany, and actual events in Germany, but it only showed one side of Germany.

--From Alex Blanco

Blog Post #4

Much like the passage by Walter Benjamin, Triumph of the Will seeks to fetishize ideology through aesthetics. This is where Triumph of the Will differs from Night and Fog, because regardless of the content, Triumph dictates to the audience a consistently optimistic message. While Night and Fog on the other hand brings together various elements and leaves those open to interpretation, even if the agenda behind the combination of those elements (music and footage juxtaposition, subtle humor, etc.) may appear obvious. This freedom to interpret, no matter how limited it may be, suggests a sense of truth seeking to the audience, providing a deeper understanding of the subject matter than merely a gallery display of fantastic achievements.

It is true however that propaganda can also implement these techniques to gather greater depth, but Triumph of the Will had no intention of going any deeper than the surface. Ultimately it underestimated the human mind's potential to have a more developed frame of reference (although probably nobody involved had accounted for the possibility of the end of the Nazi party).