PASS NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION #1299! CHINA OUT OF TIBET! 2008 OLYMPICS OUT OF CHINA!
UP FRONT News March 18, 2008
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."
By Tom Weiss
Published by Tom Weiss
Editorial Advisor: Willard Whittingham
"The paper that can't be bought and can't be sold."
By Tom Weiss
As a direct consequence of my advocacy, New York City Councilman - and mayoral candidate - Tony Avella (D.-Queens), acting carefully and yet decisively, has introduced Council Resolution #1299, which cites the genocidal Chinese Communist occupation of Tibet and calls for the removal of the 2008 Olympic Games from Beijing. Aware that despite any legislative actions, the Chinese might go on with their Games, Resolution #1299 calls upon all U.S. corporations "to withdraw sponsorship or support" of the Beijing Olympics.
Mr. Avella's decision was necessitated by the fact that the major party establishment, which includes Hillary Clinton soldier the corporate-compliant New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, has for years ignored my efforts at generating such a resolution.
In fact in 2001 after I succeeded in convincing then City Councilwoman Kathryn Freed to introduce a Free Tibet resolution, Ms. Quinn opportunistically leapfrogged in on the issue and took credit for sponsoring Resolution #802, which denounced Communist China for its actions in Tibet.
Resolution #802 passed unanimously - and had no impact whatsoever. Why? Because it made no mention of the only aspect of the Tibet occupation issue that matters to the materialistic Chinese Communist regime, i.e. the corporate cash magnet of the Olympics.
And so on numerous occasions I asked Ms. Quinn to introduce a second Tibet resolution, this one calling for the removal of the 2008 Olympics from China. Indeed, after Ms. Quinn, in a classic Democratic machine-style back room deal involving "outer borough" party bosses, became Speaker, I sent her an e-mail via her Chief of Staff Chuck Meara on January 30, 2006, urging her to introduce such a resolution. Ms. Quinn has made the mistake that former Newsday columnist Kenneth Gross wrote about in his March 19, 1981 "Queens Diary" article on me headlined "Remember Tom Weiss? He's Back." With reference to my activities in blowing the whistle on a Koch Administration coverup of budget cut-caused patient deaths at City-operated Queens Hospital Center, Mr. Gross wrote, "So you ignore Weiss at your peril." Ms. Quinn, by ignoring me and of course the Tibetans, has in effect become a participant in the media and political coverup of the Genocide in Tibet.
As thousands of UP FRONT News readers are aware, Bill and Hillary Clinton are up to their corporate eyeballs in that coverup, since at least 1992, which is when, after Bill Clinton was elected but before his inauguration, I got the information to his secretary Betty M. Currie by phone and by fax. The Clinton Administration (Bill Clinton, Warren Christopher, George Stephanopoulos, et. al.) responded by having me arrested at the U.S. Capitol and by trying to shut me up in other ways, such as by threats generated by U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton.
Those threats have come by telephone (via her investigator "Mr. Zimmerman") and via at least one threatening and defamatory e-mail about me on September 5, 2003 at 4:14 PM to my brother Jim.
When Clinton flunky Quinn tried to bury the Olympic Games issue (the Olympics are monetarily very dear to the Chinese Communist regime and by definition to the sports- connected corporate establishment) I approached City Councilman Tony Avella, an independent-minded Democrat who has stood up to the autocratic Quinn is issues including tenants rights, over-development, unwarranted salary increases for City Councilmembers, and animal rights.
When, in response to my communications, Mr. Avella made it clear that he was ready to act on the Olympic Games issue, at his request, I arranged a meeting with the Board of Directors of the U.S. Tibet Committee, a relatively small but very influential advocacy group that had already endorsed my get-the-Olympics-out-of-China proposal.
We met and over a period of several weeks jointly put together the language of the resolution.
Despite some hassles I have experienced from one self-proclaimed Tibet activist named Lhadon Tethong, whose autocratic style is not unlike those of Hillary Clinton and Christine Quinn, I arranged for Mr. Avella to speak at the free Tibet rally in Union Square on March 10.
March 10 is the anniversary of a 1959 monk-led uprising in the Tibetan capitol of Lhasa that was put down Tiananmen Square-style by the Chinese Communists. The Chinese did the same thing again in 1989. It is estimated that over 70,000 Tibetans were murdered in these protests.
On a massively larger scale, the Dalai Lama, whom I have met on a few occasions, and some of whose friends are friends of mine, has said that over 1 million Tibetans have died as a direct result of an occupation that began when Mao, in his attempt to emulate the imperialism of Adolf Hitler, invaded Tibet in 1950.
The occupation by the light-complexioned Chinese over the dark-complexioned ethnically and culturally distinct Tibetans is as racist as nazism. Mao was in fact a populism-spouting racist who is said by some historians to be responsible for more deaths than Hitler and Stalin combined. Mao and his successors have given the world the murderous Khmer Rouge (Cambodia) and Shining Path (Peru) as well as other "movements" that spout liberation but practice mass murder. No wonder Mao got along so well with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.
The fact is that the U.S. government and the media are directly complicit in the coverup of the Chinese Communist Genocide in Tibet. Why? For the love of the money to be made in the greatest hedge fund in history, the "People's Republic of China."
While there are any media people with some knowledge of the Tibet Genocide, no politi-cians are more guilty of knowingly participating in the coverup than Bill and Hillary Clinton a well as Christine Quinn. I am hopeful, especially as revolutionary ferment spreads in occupied Tibet and elsewhere spreads and as China's genocide-abetting policies in places like Darfur become more apparent, that Barack Obama will speak out. Indeed, on June 26, 2007 I discussed the Tibet isse for a few minutes directly with his wife Michelle when we met at a Harlem campaign event.
As far as I am aware the only presidential candidate who is on record, at least with UP FRONT News, in calling for self-determination for Tibet is former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who is receiving an e-mailed copy of this article.
As far as the media is concerned, many reporters and editors I've spoken to and who read UP FRONT News are aware of the Tibet genocide issue. Among the few who have written about my work on this issue is poet/novelist journalist Ellen Aug-Lytle, who did a very good article in March 1993 in the (no longer published) Downtown Magazine. Years ago when I first ran for the U.S. Senate with Tibet as a main issue the Gannett-owned Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin did a good story on my candidacy that appeared on May 25, 1993.
And when I ran as a Democratic write-in candidate against Hillary Clinton, the Staten Island Advance belatedly and very, very reluctantly ran an article by the Republican-slanted and not at all surprsingly Republicrat Hillary-leaning political editor Tom Wrobleski, a guy who does not always get his facts straight. Wrobleski in fact made mention of my claims regarding Hillary Clinton's silence on the Tibet Genocide. (For more on my campaign visit
www.tomweissdemocratforussenate.blogspot.com) The quite heavily censored - and, as one respected community leader puts it, "controlled" - Advance, apparently thinks it is good journalism to mention a genocide coverup involving a presidential candidate and then not follow it up. That is why The Staten Island Advance is earning its reputation as "The Staten Island Retreat."
As I have written in in UP FRONT News, the Genocide in Tibet is also a black issue. Among the prominent African-Americans who have begun to speak out about Tibet is the very popular civil rights leader (and UP FRONT News reader) Rev. Demetrius Carolina, Pastor of the First Central Baptist Church in Staten Island, of which I am a member.
Resolution #1299 is to be considered by the City Council Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries & International Intergroup Relations, chaired by Councilman Dominic Recchia (D.- Brooklyn). I've already talked on a couple of occasions with Mr. Recchia, who is aware that Tibet will be a campaign issue for him since he is an announced candidate for the U.S. Congress in a district that includes parts of Brooklyn and all of Staten Island.
Perhaps Christine Quinn, who has been described by Mr. Avella as a "dictator" and something of a "prima donna", (I fully agree, as I see her as the Marie Antoinette of New York politics), will try to present obstacles. After all, Bill and Hillary Clinton make a lot of money in China and may voice some modest concerns about "human rights" in China but also support the Olympics because of the capitalistic sanctity of "U.S.-China" relations. That was the same argument used by the international robber barons who collaborated with Adolf Hitler, who hosted the Nazi Olympics in Berlin in 1936.
Never again? We'll see.
China out of Tibet! 2008 Olympics out of China! Pass Resolution #1299.
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posted by Tom Weiss at 6:16 PM
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