黃禍意識再起 奧運聖火當災

【明報專訊】三藩市市議會較早時通過決議，譴責中國鎮壓西藏示威；決議通過前不久，中國駐三藩市領事館卻被投擲易燃物品——這其實便是「主戰派」（War Party）想對中國採取的行動。

About Tibet, a friend of mine sent me this link, the perspective from a Chinese guy (?): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9QNKB34cJo. There are of course counter opinions to the video too. I inevitably recall some clips I watched on youtube some time ago: fighting between Slovenia and Croatia. These 2 countries have had conflicts about their border for some time. Each side has been trying to defend their own position from all possible perspectives. Issues like this always become emotional and sometimes irrational too. I don't see any way out if we use history as the basis for argument. History, I always believe, is man-made. Same for news because today's news is tomorrow's history. It can never be objective. The tragedy arises when only few people are willing to admit their position in news reporting, but trying (or pretending) to be unbiased instead. All developed countries must have their borders re-written if we indeed stick with history. Another question immediately comes up: at which point of history should we draw the line? Should Europe go back to the time of the Roman Empire, or the Ottoman Empire or the Yuan Dynasty? Needless to talk about North America or Australia here for the history is much shorter. Why should all countries keep their borders as they are now? It has nothing to do with history. It's all politics and so a power game. (Another example is the province of Alsace in France. History may give the Germans a point to claim (back?) this piece of land. Oh, the French government probably won't welcome what I'm saying here?)

Is it about the freedom of religion? For any dominant religion in a country or a place, it's never just about religious faith. Do we have to look further than the history of the Roman Catholic Church to know that?

Europeans have a different mindset than Chinese. They always think about how different they are from the others. The Belgians are different from the Dutch and so there's no way to have a Flemish Kingdom. Slovenian and Croatian use different languages and so they must have separate countries. For them, it's strange if not unthinkable to know that within China we have so many different "languages" (we say they are different "dialects" not "languages"!) and we may not be able to communicate with each other using the local dialects. And yet, we stay as one country. If that was Europe, there would have been more than 100 countries already.

I'm really tired of all the pretence (or ignorance for some) in all these issues.