I am proposing to artists that they pass by art itself and work individually on the return to real life, the life in which a man no longer thinks he is the center of the universe, but in which the universe is the center of each man.
Yves Klein
Today, we're in a similar position as the feudal world was in the decades leading up to the great revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. The web ostensibly makes the final separation between writing and material being. Text and images can be circulated at virtually zero cost instantaneously and universally. Old forms — the book, the film, the song — are being pulled apart by new forms using that total interconnectivity. Intellectual property, that ludicrous fiction, is effectively dead, as are many of the corporations that based their value on it...
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CHINA'S state media has declared Tibet an earthly paradise, rejecting the Dalai Lama's claims that it had become a "hell on earth", and heaped scorn on the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.
The vitriol in the official media came a day after the tense anniversary of a failed 1959 uprising passed in Tibet amid a Chinese security lockdown...
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China is guilty of cultural genocide in the Buddhist nation.
"Whether we look at it from the global perspective or in the context of events in China, there are reasons for us to hope for a quick resolution of the issue."..Dalai LamaFOR those who thought his public career was ending with a whimper, not a bang, the Dalai Lama has confounded expectations. This week the exiled Tibetan leader marked the 50th anniversary of his flight from his native land by declaring that during the past five decades Tibetans had experienced "hell on earth". The consequence of continual violent repression by the country's Chinese rulers, the Dalai Lama said, was that Tibet's religion, culture, language and national identity were nearing extinction. He did not call for independence, but renewed his long-standing demand that China grant Tibet "meaningful autonomy". Working for the cause of Tibet was the responsibility of every Tibetan, he said, and "whether we look at it from the global perspective or in the context of events in China, there are reasons for us to hope for a quick resolution of the issue".
That view of what might happen was emphatically rejected in Beijing, where a Foreign Ministry spokesman accused the Dalai Lama of lying, as Chinese Government spokesmen have so often done in the past. Then the spokesman launched into another familiar line: since its military occupation of Tibet in 1950, China had undertaken a comprehensive program of modernisation, culminating in the "widest and most profound" democratic reforms in Tibetan history...
(click here to read full statement by Dalai Lama)
HALF a century after being forced into exile, the Dalai Lama has cast aside his conciliatory "middle way" approach to China and accused the communist Government of putting his people through "hell on earth".
In remarks certain to infuriate an already hostile Beijing, the Tibetan spiritual leader accused Beijing of "repressive and violent campaigns" that had killed hundreds of thousands of Tibetans and destroyed the region's cultural and natural heritage.
"These 50 years have brought untold suffering and destruction to the land and the people of Tibet," he said.
The Dalai Lama said that over five decades Tibetans had been thrust into such hardship that "they literally experienced hell on earth". He warned that Tibet's religion, culture, language and identity was "nearing extinction"...
MEDIA and rights groups have called on China to end harassment of the press, after more than a dozen foreign reporters were detained or stopped while trying to cover events surrounding tense Tibet.
"These detentions must stop," said Jonathan Watts, head of the Foreign Correspondents Club of China. "By locking up and blocking reporters, the security forces raise suspicions about their actions...
(click here for this article at THE AGE)
LHASA, March 9 (Xinhua) -- This year is the 50th anniversary of the Tibet's Democratic Reform. In 1959, Tibetan serfs and slaves, who accounted for more than 90 percent of the region's population, were freed after the central government foiled an armed rebellion staged by the Dalai Lama and his supporters. Here are some key facts and figures about Tibet...
(click for more from China View)
China on alert as Tibetans set to mark uprising
Karl Malakunas,
Beijing March 9, 2009
CHINESE authorities have imposed a security lockdown in Tibet as the Himalayan region this week marks the 50th anniversary of a failed uprising that sent the Dalai Lama into exile.Beijing is desperate to prevent protests by monks and nomads after violent unrest last year embarrassed the leadership just ahead of the Olympics in the Chinese capital.
The Dalai Lama has called on his Buddhist followers to remain true to his non-violent cause, while also warning that worsening Chinese repression could provoke further confrontations...
(click for more from The Age)
