UKC

Further to the osts on free Tibet thread.
Stop pontificating about athletes taking their one and only stab at the olympics, something they will have worked far harder for than most mountaineers.
Realistically you can easily climb Everest any time between 20-50 years old, a 30 years window, not a four year one like most athletes will have.
So shut up criticising the athletes until you are willing to put money where your mouth is and DO NOT CLIMB EVEREST, or any other Chinese Peak until Tibet is free.

In reply to Al Evans:


Al, I agree with your sentiments but, at the risk of sounding pedantic, you say:

>DO NOT CLIMB EVEREST, or any other Chinese Peak until Tibet is free.

But Everest IS NOT in China, it's on the borders of Tibet and Nepal. I fear if we make ambiguous comments we may be shooting ourselves in the foot.

In reply to nonymouse:

Good point. In fact when talking or writing about Everest from the north side we must NEVER use the words Chinese side (which I have seen used) ALWAYS the Tibeten side.

In reply to nonymouse: Seeing as the current regime in Nepal seem to be kowtowing to China I think my point stands, certainly in relation to the main point which is that climbers cannot call athletes for competing in a country they have been forced to go to fulfil thier lifestyle choices by dint of circumstances, yet climbers could make that choice far more easily and with far less personal cost.

In reply to Al Evans:

"My wife went on a gambling holiday in a mountainous country"

"Tibet?"

"Of course, how else do you gamble?"

In reply to Al Evans:
I don't think anyone has criticised the athletes, have they? I certainly fully support the athletes, as you say, it's too personally important for them. The torch carrying is nothing to do with the athletics.

In reply to gingerkate: There are several threads on here criticising the athletes Kate.

In reply to Al Evans:

ok.....sounds a bit overrated anyway.

In reply to Al Evans:

I made a decision a number of years ago not to visit China, or Tibet whilst occupied by China, for climbing or anything else. I have no particular intertest in climbing Everest, but the principle still applies.

In reply to Chris F:

My wife went on a holiday to the West Indies
Jamaica?
No, she went of her own free will.

But Chris, I don't understand what these rubbish jokes have got to do with it?

In reply to Al Evans:
Are there? Well sorry, but anyone who is down on the athletes must be plain thick. It's not their fault, you don't sacrifice your life's dream because politicians thought fit to pick China as a host for the games.

In reply to Al Evans:
Should we boycott climbing in Britain and the US until they leave Iraq and Afghanistan? Oh, but then we would have to boycott
Greece,
Italy,
Jordan,
Norway,
Oman,
etc.
And what about France? Maybe we should boycott climbing in France until they have sorted out their Comoros Islands fiasco,
and so on and so forth dribbling on forever.

In reply to Al Evans:
I'm looking, but so far I've only found one person criticising the athletes, and everyone else has already told him he's being daft. Can you give me a link to the thread?

Why do we do this, why do we have 80 threads on one subject???

In reply to Al Evans:

I can fully understand Nepal being slightly scared of China. Would you not be a little bit appeasing of a giant ruthless superpower that was your neighbour?

And surely there may be a counter argument that westerners should visit Tibet so that they can support the Tibetans financially and see things with their own eyes. Maybe Lonely Planet could point out Tibetan run business rather than Han?

In reply to Al Evans:

On a lighter note, I read the title of this thread and thought "F*** me, the last I heard he was still commentating on Test Match Special!"

In reply to gingerkate:


A common theme of my replies to these threads Kate.

In reply to gingerkate:

Sorry Kate, there have been masses but I can't be bothered , I'm sure more will come up, its a tedious process, some probably dissapeared into the chat room non=files.

Here is one of the latest ones
http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?n=294781

In reply to Al Evans:

yeah, i'll boycott them, i was planning on do some kick ass top roping in china but i will stick to southern sandstone until they put their house in order.

read a book (forget name) about oz couple sailed from hong kong in 70s, strayed into chinese waters, chinese held them captive for a decade without notifying anyone else, guy died, woman survived, everyone assumed they had died at sea. crazy. anyone else read this?

In reply to mutley: I know all that, my point is exactly what Steve Redgrave has just said, 'Why should athletes, every 4 years be expecteted to carry the can for the complete mistakes the politicians make by giving the games to unnaceaptable regimes.
Why is there not more pressure put on big business etc to implement a boycott on these countries which would undoubtably have a quicker effect, its because athletes are an easy target.
I doubt if you had given any athlete a choice that they would have chosen to compete their stab at the Olympic honours in China, yet countless UK businesses go there voluntarily every year to make their bucks.

In reply to Al Evans:

The venue for the Olympic Games is decided by the International Olympic Committee, they are a bunch of self interested shits, but they are unelected and not really politicians.

In reply to Al Evans:

Do you think we should boycott all those countries that support Israel in their genocide of the Palestinians? Or Israel itself?

Many in France had a somewhat one-sided view of the British presence in N Ireland, which is often presented here as a simple bit of colonial domination, complete with massacres of innocent civilians, religious discrimination etc... so presumably we should boycott Britain too?

You seem to only want to see the world from the WASP point of view and be incapable of imagining how much of the world views us... our presence in Iraq, Afghanistan or Africa (for the French) does not seem to worry you... You have very much the "white man's conscience" - you see the fault of others but not of your side, at least not so much.

In reply to Al Evans:

A very balanced response. I agree it's unreasonable to put pressure on atheletes like this. It's a personal decision for each and every one to make. It's because of the high profile of the Olympic Games that they rightly or wrongly provide such a wonderful platform for protest. Probably no other world event achieves this, so it's understandable that protesters will use it.

In reply to Bruce Hooker:


You have a "liberal white man's conscience" then Bruce, because you justify the Chinese occupation of Tibet on the basis that they have brought economic and social development to a backward country, but you couldn't explain how that differed from French occupation of Algeria that you were against...

In reply to Al Evans:

Al, you're probably one of the very few here that have climbed on Everest. Was Tibet free when you went? (a rhetorical questions before anyone accuses me of being ignorant of history) Indeed, was Nepal not a absolutist monarchy when you went there to try Everest?

In reply to Al Evans:

..imagine my dissappoitment when I found out that this thread wasn't about the well known Ex-England, and Yorkshire, slanty mouthed and highly opnionated batsman Geoffrey climbing in China & Tibet...

bah!

In reply to TobyA:

Your doing it again! You know that the situations are not comparable. The French colonisation of Algeria was just a straight act of 19th century European colonization. To quote wiki:

"On the pretext of a slight to their consul, the French invaded Algiers in 1830. .../.... the conquest of Algeria by the French was long and particularly violent and resulted in the disappearance of about a third of the Algerian population. France was responsible for the extermination of 1.5 million Algerians. According to Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison, the French pursued a policy of extermination against the Algerians"

On top of this they did not develop the country from the native point of view, they were kept at the bottom of the ladder and benefited little. The existing "middle class" was destroyed and when the French went (the war of independence resulted in a further 1.5 million deaths, but by then this only amounted to about 15% of the population so I suppose one could call this progress!) they left the country in chaos, with no elite or administrative middle class to build on their new found freedom.

In Tibet the ties go back to before France existed as a nation and the rise in standard of living has benefited all the population, not just the few (6%) who are Han Chinese. But you know all this, you can read better than I can.

In reply to Simon: I thought the same too. I think Geoffrey would be more of a bouldering than a climber, as it would take him too long to climb routes, but then he is old school, probably would use siege tactics

In reply to Bruce Hooker:

Yes

In reply to Bruce Hooker: The Chinese historical claim to Tibet is actually quite amusing - China was conquered by the Mongols, then Tibet was. The Chinese now claim the Mongol dynasty was in effect the Chinese state, and therefore Tibet was then part of China. This would be a bit like India claiming New Zealand on the basis that after Britain took control of India with the Raj, the Empire was in effect Indian and therefore New Zealand was during the empire period, part of India.

Of course that is all just silly historical fluff to cover the hard facts that for political and geo-strategic reasons China went to war with Tibet, Tibet lost and got occupied. Just like in many other parts of the world in the 20th century. What you say about French colonisation of Algeria, sounds very much like what the Free Tibet campaigners say about Tibet under Chinese rule, there are also plenty of middle class Algerians who became and some who still are very Francophile, just as there are Tibetans who like China. All situations are grey, except you would have it that whilst one is black and white, the other is white and black.

In reply to TobyA:

I made a mistake in saying you could read better than I can, apparently, as your resume of China Tibet history is inexact, and has nothing to do with the analogy you give... before reading take a look at a map of the world and try to locate China, Tibet, India, New Zealand, Britain... then read up the facts.

Concerning the Algerian middle classes: there have been quite a few studies written on the sociological aspects of the colonisation of Algeria and the way it was managed. This was done in quite a different way the the British colonization of India, for example, where a small number of Brits ruled a large area and created a local middle class to help, which in turn helped India when the country obtained its independence.

In Algeria large numbers of middle and working class French settlers made this training less necessary so a native middle class was not created, and those that had existed either were forced out or killed in the War of Independence... This lead, and still leads, to major problems after independence.

It's an error to imagine that each colonial country used the same methods, they were often quite different in many respects.