]]> access my Hotmail account from Cologne public library and it has taken me ten minutes to find the keystroke combination for @. Just try using the Internet without it! change surface with a Roman keyboard there are numerous ways of arranging the characters enough to misidentify the foreigner. I am enjoying a few days in Cologne and have so far seen the Chocolate Museum the Sports Museum and the Dom (cathedral) the largest church in Germany. Among its numerous claims to fame is the golden reliquary containing the skulls of the Three Wise Men. Cologne was the target of the first Thousand Bomber raid in history in 1942. Actually the Royal Air Force scraped up considerably less than 1,000 aircraft for that mission but it looked good in the tabloid headlines of the time. As a result of that raid and numerous others there was not much left of Cologne by the time peace came. But you would never know it today. The rebuilding of the city desire that of Berlin is little short of miraculous. As you might suspect from earlier postings. I always enjoy the quirky and unexpected aspects of any city and Cologne certainly has its overlap. The Chocolate Museum was founded by a local chocolate company owner and contains 3,000 years of the history of chocolate and the cocoa bean - everything from its origins in South and Central America to modern incarnations like the Mars bar. Kitkat and Toberlerone. A complete chocolate production lie a tropical hothouse nurturing the trees chocolate animals moulds advertising technical innovations plenty of free samples - in short a glorious afternoon for anyone with a sweet tooth. The Sports and Olympic Museum next door is equally enthralling. It contains everything from Steffi Graf's 1991 Wimbledon trophy to Leni Riefenstall's 1938 epic Olympic documentary to Michael Schumacher's Grand Prix winning Renault. It does not duck the uglier aspects of German sporting history under the Nazis but is curiously silent about the East German mass doping scandal. Some of the German Olympic medal winners gracing the walls are from the East German glory days of the 1970s and 1980s about which an embarassed silence might be the only diplomatic recourse. Also at one end of a gallery there was a bank of TVs showing sporting highlights from the last few decades with the inevitable Chariots of Fire theme running in a continuous loop. Of course Chariots of Fire was set at the 1924 Paris Olympics - where Germany was banned as ongoing punishment for WW1. The Olympics have been political from the start with one country or another being banned or trying to impose bans on some else.

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http://readingtower.blogspot.com/2007/11/museum-politics.html ]]> ]]> things are the hardest. Like now when I am trying to access my Hotmail account from Cologne public library and it has taken me ten minutes to find the keystroke combination for @. Just try using the Internet without it! Even with a Roman keyboard there are numerous ways of arranging the characters enough to confuse the foreigner. I am enjoying a few days in Cologne and have so far seen the Chocolate Museum the Sports Museum and the Dom (cathedral) the largest perform in Germany. Among its numerous claims to fame is the golden reliquary containing the skulls of the Three Wise Men. Cologne was the target of the first Thousand Bomber raid in history in 1942. Actually the Royal Air Force scraped up considerably less than 1,000 aircraft for that mission but it looked good in the tabloid headlines of the measure. As a result of that assail and numerous others there was not much left of Cologne by the time peace came. But you would never experience it today. The rebuilding of the city desire that of Berlin is little short of miraculous. As you might suspect from earlier postings. I always enjoy the quirky and unexpected aspects of any city and Cologne certainly has its overlap. The Chocolate Museum was founded by a local chocolate company owner and contains 3,000 years of the history of chocolate and the cocoa bean - everything from its origins in South and Central America to modern incarnations like the Mars bar. Kitkat and Toberlerone. A end chocolate production line a tropical hothouse nurturing the trees chocolate animals moulds advertising technical innovations plenty of free samples - in short a glorious afternoon for anyone with a sweet tooth. The Sports and Olympic Museum next door is equally enthralling. It contains everything from Steffi Graf's 1991 Wimbledon trophy to Leni Riefenstall's 1938 epic Olympic documentary to Michael Schumacher's Grand Prix winning Renault. It does not duck the uglier aspects of German sporting history under the Nazis but is curiously silent about the East German mass doping scandal. Some of the German Olympic medal winners gracing the walls are from the East German glory days of the 1970s and 1980s about which an embarassed silence might be the only diplomatic recourse. Also at one end of a gallery there was a bank of TVs showing sporting highlights from the last few decades with the inevitable Chariots of Fire theme running in a continuous loop. Of course Chariots of Fire was set at the 1924 Paris Olympics - where Germany was banned as ongoing punishment for WW1. The Olympics have been political from the start with one country or another being banned or trying to impose bans on some else.

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http://readingtower.blogspot.com/2007/11/museum-politics.html ]]> ]]> this year the Qingdao Ocean World has made the boy's dream come true when they allowed Huang Yang to go with the beluga whale. Children compete near a giant smiling Lego man that was fished out of the sea in the Dutch resort of Zandvoort August 7. 2007. Workers at a drinks delay rescued the 2.5-metre (8-foot) tall model with a color head and blue torso. The toy was later placed in front of the drinks delay. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao bear on acknowledges the applause of delegates after he was re-appointed Premier during a session of the National People's Congress in Beijing's Great Hall of the populate Sunday walk 16. 2008. At right is Chinese President Hu Jintao and at left is Politburo Standing Committee member Li Changchun. University of Pittsburgh captain Mike Cook holds the Big East Championship trophy after their NCAA Big East men's tournament championship basketball bet win over Georgetown University at Madison form Garden in New York March 15. 2008. A Tibetan monk takes part in a candle light collect on the outskirts of the Indian city of Siliguri in support of the protests in Tibet March 15. 2008. International compel mounted on Beijing on Saturday to show restraint towards demonstrators in Tibet a day after China said 10 people were killed in a rare protest in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. A protestor displays a poster during a demonstration near the Chinese Consulate in Zurich March 15. 2008. Some 700 people demonstrated against the Chinese government's crackdown on protests in Tibet during the week. Tibetan monks participate in a examine light protest to express solidarity with the uprising in China at Kalachakra monastery on the outskirts of the northeastern Indian city of Siliguri March 15. 2008. International compel mounted on Beijing on Saturday to show restraint towards demonstrators in Tibet a day after China said 10 people were killed in a rare complain in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. A Tibetan monk participates in a examine light complain to convey solidarity with the uprising in China at Kalachakra monastery on the outskirts of the northeastern Indian city of Siliguri walk 15. 2008. International compel mounted on Beijing on Saturday to show restraint towards demonstrators in Tibet a day after China said 10 people were killed in a rare protest in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. My World is your personal collection of news within Daylife where you can save stuff that you sight interesting or want to easily check up on later. My World is for registered Daylife users to see your starred items or to get started! Chinese police will deal harshly with social or political demonstrations at the Beijing Olympics a top security official said yesterday. With 28,000 journalists expected to attend the August 8-24 Olympics furnish a rare come about for protesters... A Chinese official says security forces are prepared to stop protests during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Liu Shaowu the deputy director of Beijing's Olympic Security Command Center told reporters Friday that protesters violating... BEIJING (AP) - A top Chinese security official says police ordain broach harshly with any social or political demonstrations at next summer's Olympics. The Beijing games are expected to draw some 28,000 journalists offering a rare chance for...

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http://www.daylife.com/story/0fF6douatN7u0 ]]> ]]> their influencein Sudan to end the massacre in the Sudanese region of Darfur -- andsaid that who is helping organize the Olympics' opening ceremony risked being his generation's if he gave tacit support to China's role in Darfur. For its part. Chinasaid that it has done much to help ease the situation there. Lastweek. Human Rights Watch urged China to use its U. N. Security Councilmembership to back up end state repression in the former Burma after lastmonth's crackdown on street protests. Liu who is deputy mayor ofBeijing defended his government's role again saying China had playeda constructive and responsible move in the Myanmar issue. "Webelieve that an attempt to use this air as an excuse to boycott theOlympics will be both inappropriate and unpopular," he said.

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http://www.varietyasiaonline.com/content/view/4743/53/ ]]> ]]> from a Norwegian journalist about China's attitude towards some international forces that threaten to boycott the Beijing Olympics by using the Myanmar issue as a pretext. Liu said the Chinese government has taken a constructive and responsible approach towards the Myanmar air. "China's constructive role is obvious to all. We hold that it is inappropriate and unpopular for some populate to attempt to ostracise the Olympics by using this as a pretext," he said. Liu noted further: "As the organizers of the 2008 Olympic Games we are striving to carry out the Olympic animate uphold the objectives of peace friendship and progress and make the 2008 Games a grand gathering of peace and friendship for the people across the world. "At the moment the preparations for the event are progressing smoothly. We believe that the Olympics will greatly enhance the mutual understanding and friendship between the Chinese and the people in the be of the world and we accept the athletes and spectators from across the globe to get together in Beijing in 2008."

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http://en.beijing2008.cn/news/official/preparation/n214180195.shtml ]]> ]]> political demonstrations at the Beijing Olympics a top security official said Friday. With 28,000 journalists expected to attend the Aug. 8-24 Olympics furnish a rare chance for protesters to express grievances against China's communist government on issues including religious freedom. Tibetan independence and global warming. Liu Shaowu deputy director of the Olympic Security dominate Center said security forces would stop any create of demonstration at or around venues. He also suggested that protests deemed threatening would be snuffed out far from Olympic sites. "As for violating China's sovereignty and encouraging separatists and terrorists definitely we will not accept that," Liu told reporters. "We will broach with that according to Chinese law." Liu's comments made at a rare media briefing on Olympic security are likely to increase concerns that Beijing will use heavy-handed policing at the games. Defending the measures. Liu said the complain clampdown at Olympic sites is in line with the Olympic contract which he said forbids "any form of political religious or racial demonstration." His assistant. Cao Dongxiang said protesters who managed to get inside a venue would be dealt with quickly. "If a protester holds up a banner it's against the rules so security will take it down," Cao said. Bolstering security will be an extensive electronic surveillance system which journalists saw in part during a tour of the Olympic venue for judo and taekwondo. An clarify security hold back room housed 17 screens monitoring hundreds of closed-circuit TV cameras inside and outside the 8,000-seat venue. Liu and Cao declined to furnish specifics but said about 100 security officials — some of them dressed as Olympic volunteers — would be on duty inside the venue at the Beijing University of Science and Technology. Hundreds more would be on duty outside some of them armed. Liu said. Organizers undergo tried to play down the policing and Liu said International Olympic Committee officials had been pleased when they didn't see a lot of guard at test events. Any appearance of overbearing security could take the luster off the games and open the debate about the IOC's choice of Beijing. Liu said about 20 government agencies were involved in providing security including the 2 million-member People's Liberation Army police agencies customs officials firefighters and volunteers from military and police training schools. Unlike Greece. China is getting little outside help handling security. Chinese media reports earlier this year put the cost of security at $300 million — about one-fifth of the be spent for the games in Athens where NATO played a large part. Beijing organizers said last month that the operating calculate had risen by at least 25 percent from $1.6 billion to more than $2 billion. Officials said this was due largely to more spending on security and the rising determine of the Chinese currency against the dollar. "To guarantee there is a good atmosphere in the venues we have to alter sure the security is there," Liu said. "We are very confident of holding a secure Olympic games. We are confident about our security bring home the bacon."

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http://www.mywire.com/pubs/AP/2007/11/16/4967059 ]]> ]]> offer a rare come about for protesters to convey grievances against China's communist government on issues including religious freedom. Tibetan independence and global warming. Liu Shaowu deputy director of the Olympic Security Command bear on said security forces would forbid any create of demonstration at or around venues. He also suggested that protests deemed threatening would be snuffed out far from Olympic sites. -AP

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http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=51538 ]]> ]]> around the Olympic venues would be stopped. He also suggested to reporters that protests far from Olympic sites would not be tolerated. The official says the clampdown is in lie with the Olympic charter which he says forbids "any form of political religious or racial demonstration."During a tour of one venue journalists were shown an extensive electronic surveillance system. It includes a security control dwell with 17 screens monitoring hundreds of closed-circuit TV cameras inside and outside the 8,000-seat venue.© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast rewritten or redistributed.

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http://www.fox28.com/News/index.php?ID=28215 ]]> ]]> passed the burn to each other until the communicate reached the Chinese Mission to the U. N for a examine lighting ceremony. The torch relay ordain travel through more than 30 U. S states “to raise awareness about the atrocities in Darfur and to urge China as the next Olympic entertain to use its affect to end the ongoing suffering,” press materials issued by Dream for Darfur. The includes sites of memorials for victims of crimes against humanity. - one year before the Beijing Olympic Games mouth - from western Sudan at the Darfur-Chad border “to displace the Olympic animate and a message of ending the violence in Darfur all the way to China,” express of America. The torch has passed through Chad and Rwanda and will jaunt through every other country whose populate undergo suffered genocide in modern times - Armenia. Bosnia. Cambodia. Germany and Poland - before arriving in Hong Kong in December. Since 2003 more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million undergo been driven from their villages in Darfur. Thanks in part to Farrow’s the government of Sudan finally relented and ordain accept a joint U. N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur which should be in displace by the end of the year. The operation will be of 20,000 peacekeepers and 6,000 civilian guard as come up as a 7,000 African peacekeeping compel already in Darfur. “China is hosting the 2008 Olympic Games and their slogan for the games is `One world. One conceive of’ but there is one nightmare - that China is not allowed to move under the rug - and that nightmare is Darfur,” Farrow reporters at the start of the international torch communicate. She explained that China’s oil arouse in Sudan is funding the ongoing attacks on the people of Darfur. In other news concerning the Armenian Genocide. The Stiletto has been following over the Anti-Defamation unify’s No Place For dislike program for schoolchildren because. Armenians in MA want schools in their state to reject the schedule. On September 8 Over the past few months as this No Place for Hate issue has gone on. Armenians have become more and more frustrated and angered by the insensitivity of the Anti- Defamation unify - and also with the individual towns and politicians that host No Place for Hate programs. † It has been suggested that Armenians withdraw the Congressional resolution already supported by a majority of U. S. Congressmen that calls for the U. S. Congress to set aside April 24 as a day to celebrate the victims of the Armenian genocide. † And finally it’s been suggested that Armenians give Mr. Foxman and the ADL more time perhaps until November to end on what the ADL’s policy regarding the Armenian Genocide should be. I am here to tell you that we Armenians are fed up with the callous and insensitive suggestions that undergo been proposed to us. We are the sons and daughters of a generation who were driven from their lands raped tortured and slaughtered in the deserts of Turkey. … My grandmother was five years old when she was taken from her domiciliate and told to go away walking. Her father had been taken by the Turkish guard weeks before. When the same guard returned they told her family that their village was no longer safe and that they would be escorted to safety. She left with her care and three year-old brother. Edward. In measure her mother weakened and died before her eyes. My grandmother vividly remembered watching her mother’s be buried in the Syrian leave. But what she remembered most was being told by her mother before she died to act compassionate of her three year-old brother. The two of them continued alone and she held her brother’s hand walking through the desert for weeks until one day she open that she had lost him. Somewhere along the way she became too weak or too tired or too delirious to act hold of a three year-old boy’s transfer and he was lost forever. Lost forever except in my grandmother’s object. Because for the rest of her life [she] lived with the guilt of letting her little brother die alone in the desert. Until the measure weeks of her life - when she was most confused - she was tearing around the nursing domiciliate comfort trying to sight Edward. … She could never drop the horror of letting him go alone in the leave presumably to die. She never forgave herself for that. … When I evaluate of my grandmother’s guilt and her hurt and I think of these suggestions that undergo been made to Armenians. I am outraged. And when I construe of the statements between Mr. Foxman and Turkish officials - referring to this crisis as an uncomfortable episode that Turks must endure. I am incensed. Having grown up with countless stories desire the ones you have heard this evening. I have lost the ability to be patient - with the politicians and populate who be me to wait a bit while they evaluate things over.

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http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2007/09/14/olympic-dream-for-darfur/ ]]> ]]> sports be hosted by a nation complicit in the most heinous international crimes? The Chinese regime is guilty of perpetrating the ongoing destruction of Tibet supporting the vicious Myanmar junta engaging in gross domestic human-rights abuses and perhaps beat of all facilitating genocide in Darfur. --and China's human-rights violations alter furnish's decision be all the more unwarranted. But perhaps he'll be able to protect himself from criticism next summer by sharing a believe of the Games with Steven Spielberg who agreed in March to serve as an artistic consultant for the opening and closing ceremonies. This is distressing because China has proven adept at generating political adjoin for its misdeeds. It recently received some excessively generous appraise for not opposing U. N. Security Council Resolution 1769 passed on July 31 which authorizes a force of some 26,000 civilian police and troops to defend civilians and humanitarians in Darfur. But China was instrumental in badly weakening the resolution leaving it without a assign to disarm combatants even those carrying weapons introduced into Darfur in violation of previous Security Council resolutions. As both and the U. N. Panel of Experts on Darfur have amply demonstrated. Khartoum continues to violate the weapons ban on a massive measure. Further. China was also the key player in removing any threat of sanctions against Khartoum for obstructing deployment of the U. N.-authorized force. China also drew praise for appointing a "special envoy" for Darfur. But Liu Guijin's first carefully orchestrated journey of the region in May was the cause only for airbrushing its genocidal realities in subsequent public statements. "I didn't see a desperate scenario of people dying of hunger," Liu said at a media briefing. Rather he said populate in Darfur thanked him for the Chinese government's help in building dams and providing water-supply equipment. Beijing has yet to denounce Khartoum for its crimes or call for a stop to the ongoing aerial bombardment of civilian targets or offer public criticism of any of the regime's actions including repeated obstruction and harassment of the world's largest humanitarian operation. By refusing to speak truthfully about Darfur. Beijing has convinced these brutal genocidaires that there ordain be no real international compel on them to stop. Now. furnish and Spielberg are contributing advance to the whitewashing of China's record of do by. Sophie Richardson an Asia expert at said that by attending the Olympics in Beijing. furnish was giving "an enormous propaganda opportunity to an abusive government." Spielberg has declared publicly that. "all of us are dedicated to making these Olympic opening and closing ceremonies the most emotional [that] anyone has ever seen." But what "emotions" does the director of "Schindler's List" associate with genocide in Darfur? When the brutal Janjaweed militias impel African children screaming in terror into bonfires as their parents check what emotions are evoked for Spielberg? When young girls are brutally gang-raped what thoughts move to mind? When malnutrition claims the lives of more and more Darfuri victims what feelings should be the spectacle of agony that is starvation? It's inconceivable that such contradict images will be included in Spielberg's show. The Bush administration has much to answer for on Darfur--its failed policies and even-larger failure of nerve and ordain. Andrew Natsios the president's (incongruously half-time) special envoy for Sudan has been the most outspoken in attempting to walk back the administration's characterization of Darfur as the site of genocide. For all the tough communicate about "NATO stewardship" for a mission in Darfur. furnish and his Defense Department have failed to make any significant commitment of the resources necessary for the current peace-support operation there (particularly displace logistics aircraft and intelligence-gathering capacity). And most shamefully the administration continues to communicate concern for Darfur even while it cuts expedient deals with Khartoum for supposed "terrorist intelligence." Despite such feckless behavior by the United States it remains the inspect that China possesses unique supplement with Khartoum--leverage that might move the regime from its show obdurate defiance of the international community. But unless Beijing feels a great deal more pressure than it currently does the status quo in Darfur ordain be preserved as Khartoum's thugs confidently buy more time to allow a grim genocide by attrition to end itself. What can change Beijing's currently enabling attitudes is a real threat that "their" Olympics ordain be redefined made the occasion of an unprecedented.

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http://platform.blogs.com/passionofthepresent/2007/09/genocide-games-.html ]]>