Olympic Torch - email that turned into a rant...

An email exchange between a few friends in London

CA - A malaysian

Anyone interested in seeing the Olympic torch?

http://www.london.gov.uk/torchrelay/london/map.jsp

There are carnival activites planned as well....I think it should be
interesting.

Me - half jokingly

i will go if you provide me with a "FREE TIBET" T-shirt....

R - a Chinese

*cough* excuse me...

SJ - another Chinese

Don't really understand why every single non-Chinese thinks people in Tibet want to be independent. A group of morons kill people, set fire, stole money doesn't necessarily reflect that the majority people in Tibet want to be independent too, I don't think.

There is just no single history book or media will report 100% truth. The history books and media were controlled by each country for ease of their rule of the country or for some other political purposes.

As Chinese, we were taught Tibet is part of China. As foreigners, they were told China invaded Tibet in 1959. But the thing is none of us lived at that time and also happened to be in Tibet, we need to do more research and hear stories from all perspectives to judge the issue more objectively.

Me - Start of rant

I totally agree with you here, that no history book or media will report 100% truth. When America invaded Iraq a lot of people thought it was wrong but obviously the americans didn't think so. The American media didn't help either. Luckily there were other media sources like the arab channel (i forgot what it was called). Nowadays, half the war is about public opinion, and this can be affected by the media, which was why they (the americans) initially invited the press to iraq as well to build on the goodwill of the press. This propaganda effort is of course not just the isolated to the americans... The recent Myanmar/Burma riots come to mind - I saw a picture of the national news actually saying that they were trying to maintain stability and security and all that when they killed dunno how many monks and arrested thousands others. they blanked out all forms of media, eventually even shutting down mobile phones and the internet.

Singapore is also quite bad in media freedom. one of the worst in the world in fact. but from what I hear China is worse.

I don't know if this is true, maybe you can educate me... but China disallows access to the BBC. and to blogs like blogspot.com. it also denies access to youtube, except selected videos. Singapore doesn't do that at least - it may censor and pursue those who posted objectionable stuff within singapore but it has little juristiction otherwise. now, i'm sure you'll agree with me that such drastic censorship rules mean less media freedom which means more room for information manipulation.

So how do we judge what is true if we cannot believe the media and we cannot trust history books? Honestly, I don't know myself. I wish I knew. I read about the Christian crusade in the early ages. they were hailed as heroes etc but obviously thats because what we hear is mostly from the western side. Simarly, I had always thought if the Germans and Japanese had won the world war, they would have swamped the world with their propoganda and skewed history that today we might actually believe that they were a great power who united the world or what not.

so back to the crux of the problem. how do we know what is true, and how do we judge more objectively... following the majority isn't obviously the best option but its probably the least antagonistic one. Its like asking if you were crazy, how would you know you're crazy? - probably if you notice everyone else being very different from you. on the other hand, if everyone was the same as you except this one particular guy, then maybe this guy is crazy... so extrapolating from that, given that "every single non-chinese thinks people in Tibet wants to be independent", maybe its only the chinese that thinks tibet wants to be part of china? and that this could be due to the chinese propoganda?

and finally, in my humble opinion, its really difficult to dispute an invasion on whether it actually happened or not... people could uncover the truth (perhaps scrolls or artifacts or events recorded all over the world) about wars happening in 2000B.C.... what happened in 1959 shouldn't be possibly be disputed.

I draw another example to Iraq... if it was easy fabricate a story that China and invaded Tibet, I'm quite certain the Americans could have planted WMDs in Iraq, thus vindicating their unwarranted invasion.

SJ

I like W's attitude. :) Will not run out of things to argue about next time we catch up.