In light of human rights violations surrounding the Olympics in Beijing, we have organised a 'RIDE FOR TIBET'. We all love riding our bikes so lets ride for a good cause!

The Chinese government has locked up over a thousand Buddhist monks in Tibet to crush any sign of dissent during the Olympics, this is the latest in a series of Beijing’s despicable acts that use the Olympics as an excuse to crack down on Tibetan cries for human rights and freedom.

We are extremely disappointed that President Bush and other world leaders are turning a blind eye to the suffering of the Tibetan people and attending the Olympics opening ceremonies. We are appealing to you to show these leaders
the true meaning of courage and character by
standing up for Tibet during the Beijing Olympics.



MEETING POINT:
south bank, under waterloo bridge, next the national film theatre

Date:Friday, August 15, 2008
Time:6:00pm - 10:00pm
Location:SOUTH BANK


ENDING AT:
chinese embassy

49-51 Portland Pl
London, W1B 1JL,


INVITE YOUR FRIENDS, MAKE THIS THE BIGGEST THING EVER!!!

..LETS MAKE OLYMPIC HISTORY FOR TIBET!

Tibetan riders in TIBET!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxm2obArsBs

what date and time will this be?

Sorry, that would probably be helpful! here ya go:

Date:Friday, August 15, 2008
Time:6:00pm - 10:00pm
Location: SOUTH BANK

See you there.

Woohoo!

i am in

might even get your bro on a bike ride with us!

im there!

OOOOOOOO NO, not again. : ) sweet, be good to see ya both.

so... who's going, when and where are we meeting up?

1.fred

Anyone know what the route for this is??

If thats the case I wont be home in time for tea!

...

i'm not going on this ride because i basically dont know shit about the politics of tibet/china, and after discussing with some chinese friends of mine, i'm still no clearer. on the critical mass list, someone also pointed out this article: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4111 - i found it a good read which expressed at least some of my thoughts (about knowing nothing!) although i may not agree or believe all of it. the last paragraph, though, is good:

for me, the summary fact is that i do not know what is best for tibet.

If it is a 'protest' don't forget to avoid the 1 kilometre exclusion zone around Whitehall - otherwise you may be arrested.

Fair enough. Though I have been to tibet (immediately before the attempted uprising) and have seen first-hand the effect of the chinese immigration policy. I've read a little, and talked to tibetans about some of the issues. Almost all of the Han chinese in tibet are from extremely poor villages in rural china. They are given a large grant to resettle in tibet. Today more than 75% of Lhasa is Han chinese. The difference between the chinese section and the tibetan quarter of Lhasa is incredible, like night and day.

whilst it's true that few of us in the west (including myself) are knowledgable enought to know what's best for tibet, this question is the wrong question to be asking. What we should be asking is why have Tibetans not been able to decide what is best for Tibet. It's my understanding that the purpose of this ride is to highlight the fact that peaceful tibetan buddhist monks have been locked up and tortured / killed for asking this very question.

Right now they can't ask, and we choose not to. Dark times.

Fred do you know the route coz all I got so far was a map to Tibet!

this article is littered with factual inaccuracies, easily refuted. It's conclusions are applied with Friedman-like, neo-conservative logic.

Dark times indeed.

I've just read most of the wikipedia article, which I personaly think is quite balanced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet#T...ublic_of_China

i'll dig around, standby...

Where is the 'RIDE FOR XINJIANG' ?

so are people meeting up at 6? im gonna be a bit late for this. will anyone be around at about 630?

leaving southbank at 6pm, no info on the route. I guess it's secret. find my number on the names and phone numbers list, call me when you get there.

will do, cheers fred.

I'm just reading this now, would have loved to have come. I hope you had a great turn out.

Damn, got held up at work, and didnt know the route!! Went past the embassy on the way home but it was all too late! :)

Was it a good turn out??

yeah, i didn't say i thought the article was correct, but that there were some interesting points. anyway, thanks for the link, i've skimmed it briefly and look forward to reading it properly soon.

it was cool - will get some photos up and post the link. about 75 riders, a good range of pepople - some CTC hippies (some really interesting people), switched on regular riders on mountain bikes, some tibetans, people on bromptons, recumbies, and a couple of very hot fixed riding girls who I didn't get to chat to :-(

Cookie and I reprazented for lfgss, you can see his loverly yellow whitcomb in some of the pics. We ended up at central drinks.

bad points were a couple of altercations with taxi drivers, lack of sufficient numbers to really make an impact, and the fact that we couldn't actually stop at the embassy, just ride around it.

I saw it ride past the pub I was at & it looked a bit under populated with overscaled music and a mumbling man on the mic. Still the thought was there!

slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/2528724...57949334/show/

Why dont you all ride your bandwagons there...

On a more serious note, although China certainly does have its problems (much like our support of illegal wars, torture, rendition flights, holding suspects without charge for months if not years) naive, ill advised and often down right ignorant protests in support of a tyrannical theocracy really get on my tits. What is it you want for Tibet? They were fucked on their own and now they are slightly less fucked and its only improving along with the rest of China, would you rather see a return to the halcyon days of Tibet the Shangri'la when slavery abounded and monks lived like princes? You would laugh if i rode around wrapped in the northumbrian flag demanding autonomy, and i know why, because its not hip and probably by pure accident you know too much about britain's politics and people to know it would not work.

Salmo - well said.

Though I suspect some of the over-simplification of the Tibet issue is because "more autonomy and greater protection of minority rights in Tibet" is a bit of a mouthful and "The Dalai Lama seems like a thoroughly nice bloke" isn't really a policy.

A lot of this is just fashion, though. After 9/11 a lot of the bright young activists I knew sported beards and keffiyehs and were suddenly very knowledgeable about goings-on in the Middle East. Had it been the 1960s or 1970s they would have sported beards and Maoist literature and been very knowledgeable about goings-on in Latin America. In the late 1990s it was the WTO. I don't really remember before that, I wasn't particularly interested in politics then.

Tibet was an independent country invaded by the Chinese and has been 'illegally' occupied for the last fifty years. One of the arguments put forward for this invasion was that the people of Tibet lived as feudal serfs and that the Chinese were the Tibetan people’s liberators. This is an interpretation that many Tibetans today are taking issue with. To take the attitude that they are better off under the Chinese is condescending the same argument applied to the Basques or the Welsh would be dismissed by nationalists in these regions out of hand. Whereas Basques and Welsh have a degree of economic, political and cultural autonomy the Tibetans are subjected to mass imprisonment, constant heavy security and patriotic education campaigns. The comparison to Northumberland is somewhat disingenuous a closer comparison would be the highland clearances.