Sorry not to have posted more recently on this month's interesting developments, but I've been traveling on business. There is some news on our Twitter account, We've suspended it after our contacts started getting bizarre, junk emails allegedly from us. This is a classic Chinese Public Security Bureau hacket trick. I've heard about other human rights activists whose email accounts (or Twitter) get hacked, and then the addresses are spammed with bizarre emails. It's a sure fire way to get people to stop reading your emails or even block your address. So, we've been hacked by China. It's a badge of distinction, and it must mean we're hitting a nerve. Soon I'll post more on the Obama-Dalai Lama meeting, the current direction of the International Campaign for Tibet, and why a radical change of tactics is needed now. Bear with me a day or two to catch up, but there will be more this weekend.    

What an interesting week. China told the Dalai Lama's delegates they don't represent any Tibetans except for the Dalai Lama, thus concluding the inconclusive "talks" between Beijing and the Tibetans. So much for dialogue. With China, everything is a one-way street. China also announced it will punish US companies that are involved in arms sales to Taiwan. China also threatened other unspeficied repercussions against America. US Ambassador John Huntsman (a billionaire whose family fortune in the chemical business depends heavily on trade with China) was called in by a Chinese official for a dressing down.  Another Chinese official flatly rejected America's demand that China start consuming more, and allow its currency to appreciate, in order to balance global trade. Now President Obama is going to host the Dalai Lama in the White House. The Chinese consider this open defiance. And Google has teamed with the National Security Agency (NSA) in a cooperative research agreement to try to find out exactly what happened with China's cyber-attacks against Google. Read the New York Times account of the deal between the NSA and Google here: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/science/05google.html?hp

Privacy advocates in America (with whom I generally concur) are alarmed at the prospect of data-sharing between Google and the NSA and have filed suit for disclosure of the details. In this instance, I'm not alarmed about the potential privacy issues. The real threat to privacy here is China, not America, and Google will need our government's high-tech resources to get to the bottom of China's cyber-Gestapo tactics.

More power to Sergey Brin. He realizes that when you pick a fight with dictatorship, you are in a struggle to the finish. Either you finish off the dictatorship -- or it will finish off you.   

This may be the week the wheel starts to turn, and the world  starts to see China for the dangerous aggressor it truly is. The sooner the Beijing regime is consigned to the dust-bin of history, the better off we all will be.