Can you prove there is little truth to the story? China has acknowledge the shooting happened.

October 14, 2006 @ 12:06 pm | Comment

Oops, China the murderer is winning more qualifying friends. Shamelessness is the top requirement.

October 14, 2006 @ 3:55 pm | Comment

Please, everyone, keep the conversation civil. I’d appreciate it.

October 14, 2006 @ 4:37 pm | Comment

China is lying outrightly saying its soldiers shot in self defence. See this video shot by an eyewitness. It is cold blooded murder

Exclusive footage of Chinese soldiers shooting at Tibetan pilgrims
Pro Tv cameraman Sergiu Matei returned to Romania after climbing Himalaya and brought home with him a story that shocks.

http://tinyurl.com/ynxww8

October 15, 2006 @ 4:17 am | Comment

Ok, I saw the video. From this video, I don’t know see why the soldiers were wrong in opening fire. What is the duty of a border patrol soldier? The duty of the border patrol soldier is to guard the border from any illegal entrance and exits. They must do everything to stop illegal entrance and exists. So in this case, they first warned the runners, but the warning was ignored. So what can they do? Of course they can try to chase the runners, but that is not practical. So they opened fire to stop the runners, they simply did their duty as border patrol men. This is the same in every country. For example: http://tinyurl.com/y98wdy

If you do not believe me. You can try to drive to the US-Mexico border, and then stop 1 meter from the border, then run across and ignore the warnings of the American border patrol men. If you can still come back alive, then you can continue to post here and tell us.

October 15, 2006 @ 11:08 am | Comment

Pigsun,

I have never heard of the US border patrol opening fire on anyone just because he or she was making a run for the border in either direction. If it was a drug runner, or a murderer, or someone else who had committed a serious crime, you might have a point. These were just people looking to practice their religion.

October 15, 2006 @ 11:38 am | Comment

Thomas, you have never heard? Then please read this:

http://tinyurl.com/y98wdy

October 15, 2006 @ 1:42 pm | Comment

There are lots of problems on the US/Mexican border (and I don’t agree with a lot of aspects of US policy towards Mexico – this proposed fence is one of the dumbest things I’ve heard in a long time). From the NYT article, I’d say that the shootings are hard to justify. I’ll also say that they involved aggressive actions on the part of the victims, and that the victims and shooters were in close proximity to each other.

The Tibetans were leaving China, they were women and children and they were shot from a distance. I would disagree that there was any compelling security reason to shoot them, at least based on what we know.

I’d also say that if the Mexico shootings are completely unjustified (and I think the one profiled was certainly questionable), how does this somehow excuse the Tibetan shootings? I get really tired of this whole, “well, THEY did it TOO!” argument to justify wrongs. You’ll notice that Richard and I spend plenty of time posting about negative aspects of the US. It makes me crazy when people try to justify abuses and torture at Gitmo by saying, “well, our enemies are worse! They cut off peoples’ heads!”

I mean, if something is wrong, it’s wrong. Why must there always be this automatic defense of the indefensible?

Pointing out extenuating circumstances and other explanations for what happened is an entirely different thing. I welcome that, and we shouldn’t be too quick to judge when we don’t have all the evidence.

October 15, 2006 @ 1:58 pm | Comment

Lisa, you’re right, but here’s a reminder that arguing with pigsun about categorical morality is like trying to argue with Jeffrey Dahmer about whether his diet is healthy.

October 15, 2006 @ 2:45 pm | Comment

Oooh, a series of very bad jokes flashed across my brain-pan…too fast to recall, thankfully!

October 15, 2006 @ 2:50 pm | Comment

OK, here’s one (a bit dated, but you’ll remember):

What did God say to David Koresh when he arrived at the Pearly Gates?

“Well done, my son.”

(ducking from rotten tomatoes….)

October 15, 2006 @ 2:55 pm | Comment

Aiyeee!!!

October 15, 2006 @ 4:02 pm | Comment

Jeffrey Dahmer’s diet and Pigsun – all in one analogy – that’s too much for me. It hurts my brain even thinking about it.

A serious suggestion for Pigsun: in order to establish the brutality of the US border security, I suggest that you should leave your comfortable home today, drive out to the US-Mexico border and try to across over to Mexico by feet, just like what those Tibetan children had done. When a snipper from the US border security open fire at you, we can then know for sure that they are brutal murderers, just the same as those PLAs who murder those Tibetan women and children. A deal?

October 15, 2006 @ 5:21 pm | Comment

That’s a nice idea (or it would be nice if the border guards actually did open fire on pigsun, preferably aiming below the waist), but in reality, America’s border guards behave more like in THIS video:

http:/www.transience.com.au/el/eloo.html

(by the way, isn’t the music track that plays on and on at the very end really sweet in a hypnotic way? 🙂

October 15, 2006 @ 5:45 pm | Comment

PS, correction of the above link:

http://www.transience.com.au/el/el00.html

October 15, 2006 @ 5:48 pm | Comment

I think that Jose is a very sweet character and he’ll make a much better immigrant than the likes of Pigsun. At least he would be much more grateful to his adopted country and would integrate better than in the American society. (Sigh!) Who says that life is fair?

October 15, 2006 @ 6:48 pm | Comment

I think that Jose is a very sweet character and he’ll make a much better immigrant than the likes of Pigsun. At least he would be much more grateful to his adopted country and would integrate better in the American society. (Sigh!) Who says that life is fair?

October 15, 2006 @ 6:49 pm | Comment

Whatever happened to we report; you decide? Oh wait, Fox News doesn’t try that; so neither should you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiF44Wu20Zg

October 15, 2006 @ 8:33 pm | Comment

The children walking over deep slow are so young. Where is the paper work to permit adults to take them such an ordeal? Without clear paper work, technically, the one who get shot can be treated as a kidnapper.

For children who are so young, you think they actually think they want to go through this themself? Seeking religious education is just a siimpe way to glorify this. Those kids are either brainwashed or forced to go through this ordeal.

October 16, 2006 @ 12:07 am | Comment

If it makes you Quacking Canards Factioners feel better; even the 山是山，水是水 panda-huggers I know are shocked; if not by the brutality of the event, by its sheer senselessness.

October 16, 2006 @ 1:14 am | Comment

I don’t know if I’d say that that makes me feel better, except that it’s good to know people recognize the senselessness of this, regardless of ideology.

And let me say this – I hate seeing stuff like this. I am not rooting for China to be the bad guys and to fail. I want China to succeed; I want the Chinese people to have a government that works for them.

October 16, 2006 @ 3:41 am | Comment

Lisa,

There is no debate possible: every victim that falls on the borderpasses between Tibet and Nepal, at the border between the U.S and Mexico, at the wall between Palestine and Isra�l or in the past at the Berlin wall is one too many. Borders, though accepted by most, are just artificial lines on a map that do not take into account the social and human conditions and desires of those they keep confined within those lines. In the best of worlds, people are free to cross the lines. In the worst, they get shot for doing so. I believe I went nauseous when I read Pigsun’s comment that “they can try to chase the runners, but that is not practical”. So I assume that the convenience argument endorses then the shooting of those people ??!!! O tempora, o mores !
The thing is, people will always strive for at least a minimum of freedom, and that is a damn inconvenient impracticality for the patrol men at the Tibetan border. It get’s even more inconvenient for China in a world where they are now being watched by the omnipresent Big Brother community of media, bloggers and the like. So it can continue to play the fool by upholding the self-defense argument (I must admit that the video for me offers no final proof of the killing -but having the Chinese now admit it themselves, I guess that’s enough evidence for me-, but it offers proof that in no way the Tibetans staged an attack first ) or try to step in line with that one rule that makes us civilised men: “Thou shall not kill”.

October 16, 2006 @ 8:31 am | Comment

Just saw the video on the BBC site. It is appalling.
Clearly Chinese lives just don’t matter as much to the PRC.

October 16, 2006 @ 11:45 pm | Comment

steve

Where is the paperwork Chinese parents need to fill their kids full of crap, let them watch TV 24/7 and become obese? Answer is that there is none, just as there is none to flee persecution in Tibet. Though trying to escape State abuse of power in China seems to be a capital crime in the PRC now – you have to take it and smile, else you’re liable to be shot as you’re running away……

October 17, 2006 @ 1:06 am | Comment

Raj,

In China, childrean is not allowed into church, mosque, etc. You can call it religious persecution. I call it common sense.

Full time religious education is essentially a brainwashing process, no matter how you glorify it. Young kids should learn science and prepare themselves to contribute to society.

Equating watching TV to taking kids through high mountain snow just shows you have little common sense you actully have.

October 17, 2006 @ 5:43 am | Comment

Just a thought for Pigsun. I am a bit amazed that you tend to justify the brutal action by the Chinese soldiers on the Tibetans by drawing attention to happenings in some other place.

It could be that there are killings in other similar areas. But no government will go to the extent of trying to fool the world by claiming “self defence” as the reason for shooting unarmed Tibetan children (The woman who died was reported to be just 17 years old). From the video it is clear that there was no question of self defence because the Tibetans were not doing anything other than fleeing.

If China really wants to address this question of fleeing Tibetans then it should look into the reasons why Tibetans flee to India to get a wholesome religious, cultural and modern education and to enjoy the freedom that they are being denied in their homeland.

October 18, 2006 @ 1:11 am | Comment

Tenzin, are you actually trying to reason with pig’s son? Don’t bother – he’s the closest thing we have here to a true party shill. And to a demon.

October 18, 2006 @ 9:12 am | Comment

Ok, let’s just take Steve’s argument – Gelsang Namtso, 17, was shootable and bullet-worthy under China’s law. If so, why wouldn’t Chinese government just state that?

In their official statement those Tibetan ‘stowaways’ refused to listen to soldiers and “attacked the soldiers”, who were then “forced to defend themselves”. None of these nonsense ever happened.

Why lie again, China? Why defend a liar, Steve?

October 18, 2006 @ 8:58 pm | Comment

The death toll keeps rising, even from China’s official report:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2417998,00.html
It follows their time-honored tradition of denial-only.one-only.two-only.those.deserve pattern.

October 25, 2006 @ 5:41 am | Comment