Western athletes boycott the Beijing Olympics?

[2020hindsight]

juw,
I voted no to the sportspeople taking the entire responsibility here, but as regards your implication that China is innocent,,, why so much secrecy / control / exclusion of the press?

Why doesn't China do more in Burma? etc

Why doesn't China take it's opportunities to gain real international respect?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/17/2192041.htm

Senate insists China should protect human rights in Tibet
Posted Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:14pm AEDT
Updated Mon Mar 17, 2008 9:05pm AEDT

The Senate has called on China to respect human rights as it deals with protests in Tibet.

Greens Senator Bob Brown moved the motion which urged the Government to pressure China to insist that rights are protected and not to deny the media access to hotspots.

The Government supported his motion and the Special Minister of State, John Faulkner, called on China to do more.

"We do believe ... that an open and transparent approach to human rights issues would greatly assist China strengthen its standing in the international arena," Mr Faulkner said. ... etc

 

[juw177]

Hi 2020hindsight. My view on the media blackout below. And yes, I know this is not the popular opinion but it separates fact from fiction.

It is hard to know if China has been innocent through these protests. Due to the media exclusion the only real footage we have is Chinese TV covering the violence of the Tibetans. Of course the reports are biased, but it is still mob violence and does warrent a crackdown anywhere else in the world.

There are also a few amateur tourist videos showing violent Tibetans.

There is also one (I believe the only) western reporter that was an eye witness to this. His interview is here, and he actually says that the Chinese police were very cautious in the midst of the Tibetan violence:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/20/tibet.miles.interview/

My point is that all that didn't stop western TV spinning all sorts of stories of foul play by the Chinese, complete opposite spectrum to the Chinese reports, eg,
* When Chinese did let reporters in, the only news report that came out of it was a bunch of Tibetans protesting to the press to not believe the Chinese. They do not mention that the reporters stated that the city was destroyed by ethnic targeted violence. They saw that hospitals were destroyed, banks were robbed, girls were burned alive.
* Footage of Nepalese soldiers arresting monks and labeling the soldiers as Chinese.
* Many pictures of army vehicles and uniformed soldiers. Little pictures of rioting Tibetans.
* Every article quotes Dalai Lama saying he reckons 120 Tibetans died (even though this man never set foot in Tibet the last 50 years).
* Almost no mention of the trail of destruction left by the mob.


Keep in mind if China obviously thinks that a media blackout is less damaging to China's reputation than otherwise. This can be due to 2 reasons:

1. Chinese are using excessive force to quell the protest:
Possible, but there were no eye witness accounts as yet.

2. Chinese thinks that western media was only interested in spinning a story on police brutality. (Which they did anyway without conclusive evidence). After all, China never gets any good press abroad anyway so it is understandable.

 

[juw177]

This is the only eye witness account by a western reporter of the Tibet violence. (Unfortunately media outlets tend to ignore this guy and go to Richard Gere or spin their own stories about police brutality.)

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/20/tibet.miles.interview/

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- James Miles, of The Economist, has just returned from Lhasa, Tibet. The following is a transcript of an interview he gave to CNN.

Q. How easy was it for you to see what you wanted to see?

A. Well remarkably so, given that the authorities are normally extremely sensitive about the presence of foreign journalists when this kind of incident occurs. I was expecting all along that they were going to call me up and tell me to leave Lhasa immediately. I think what restrained them from doing that, one very important factor in this, was the thoughts of the Olympic Games that are going to be staged in Beijing in August. And they have been going out of their way to convince the rest of the world that China is opening up in advance of this. I think they probably didn't want me there but they knew that I was there with official permission, and one thing they've been trying to get across over the last few months is that journalists based in Beijing can now get around the country more freely than they could before. Of course Tibet is a special example. I've been a journalist in China now for 15 years altogether. This is the first time that I've ever got official approval to go to Tibet. And it's remarkable I think that they decided to let me stay there and probably they felt that it was a bit of a gamble. But as the protests went on I think they also probably felt that having me there would help to get across the scale of the ethnically-targeted violence that the Chinese themselves have also been trying to highlight.

Q. What you say you saw corroborates the official version. What exactly did you see?

A. What I saw was calculated targeted violence against an ethnic group, or I should say two ethnic groups, primarily ethnic Han Chinese living in Lhasa, but also members of the Muslim Hui minority in Lhasa. And the Huis in Lhasa control much of the meat industry in the city. Those two groups were singled out by ethnic Tibetans. They marked those businesses that they knew to be Tibetan owned with white traditional scarves. Those businesses were left intact. Almost every single other across a wide swathe of the city, not only in the old Tibetan quarter, but also beyond it in areas dominated by the ethnic Han Chinese. Almost every other business was either burned, looted, destroyed, smashed into, the property therein hauled out into the streets, piled up, burned. It was an extraordinary outpouring of ethnic violence of a most unpleasant nature to watch, which surprised some Tibetans watching it. So they themselves were taken aback at the extent of what they saw. And it was not just targeted against property either. Of course many ethnic Han Chinese and Huis fled as soon as this broke out. But those who were caught in the early stages of it were themselves targeted. Stones thrown at them. At one point, I saw them throwing stones at a boy of maybe around 10 years old perhaps cycling along the street. I in fact walked out in front of them and said stop. It was a remarkable explosion of simmering ethnic grievances in the city.

Q. Did you see other weapons?

A. I saw them carrying traditional Tibetan swords, I didn't actually see them getting them out and intimidating people with them. But clearly the purpose of carrying them was to scare people. And speaking later to ethnic Han Chinese, that was one point that they frequently drew attention to. That these people were armed and very intimidating.

Q. There was an official response to this. In some reporting, info coming from Tibetan exiles, there was keenness to report it as Tiananmen.

A. Well the Chinese response to this was very interesting. Because you would expect at the first sings of any unrest in Lhasa, which is a city on a knife-edge at the best of times. That the response would be immediate and decisive. That they would cordon off whatever section of the city involved, that they would grab the people involved in the unrest. In fact what we saw, and I was watching it at the earliest stages, was complete inaction on the part of the authorities. It seemed as if they were paralyzed by indecision over how to handle this. The rioting rapidly spread from Beijing Road, this main central thoroughfare of Lhasa, into the narrow alleyways of the old Tibetan quarter. But I didn't see any attempt in those early hours by the authorities to intervene. And I suspect again the Olympics were a factor there. That they were very worried that if they did move in decisively at that early stage of the unrest that bloodshed would ensue in their efforts to control it. And what they did instead was let the rioting run its course and it didn't really finish as far as I saw until the middle of the day on the following day on the Saturday, March the 15th. So in effect what they did was sacrifice the livelihoods of many, many ethnic Han Chinese in the city for the sake of letting the rioters vent their anger. And then being able to move in gradually with troops with rifles that they occasionally let off with single shots, apparently warning shots, in order to scare everybody back into their homes and put an end to this.


Q. Did you actually see clashes between security forces and Tibetan protesters?

A. Well what I saw and at this stage, the situation around my hotel which was right in the middle of the old Tibetan quarter, was very tense indeed and quite dangerous so it was difficult for me to freely walk around the streets. But what I saw was small groups of Tibetans, and this was on the second day of the protests, throwing stones towards what I assumed to be, and they were slightly out of vision, members of the security forces. I would hear and indeed smell occasional volleys of Tear gas fired back. There clearly was a small scale clash going on between Tibetans and the security forces. But on the second day things had calmed down generally compared with the huge rioting that was going on...on the Friday. And the authorities were responding to these occasional clashes with Tibetans not by moving forward rapidly with either riot police and truncheons and shields, or indeed troops with rifles. But for a long time, just with occasional, with the very occasional round of tear gas, which would send and I could see this, people scattering back into these very, very, narrow and winding alleyways. What I did not hear was repeated bursts of machine gun fire, I didn't have that same sense of an all out onslaught of massive firepower that I sensed here in Beijing when I was covering the crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests in June, 1989. This was a very different kind of operation, a more calculated one, and I think the effort of the authorities this time was to let people let off steam before establishing a very strong presence with troops, with guns, every few yards, all across the Tibetan quarter. It was only when they felt safe I think that there would not be massive bloodshed, that they actually moved in with that decisive force.

Q. At time you left, were Han Chinese moving freely back?

A. There were some on the Saturday morning. On the second day we came back to the shops and I saw them picking through the wreckage, tears in their eyes. They were astonished, as I was, at the lack of any security presence on the previous day. It was only during the night at the end of the first day that this cordon was established around the old Tibetan quarter. But even within it, for several hours afterwards, people were still free to continue looting and setting fires, and the authorities were still standing back. And it was only as things fizzled out towards the middle of the second day that as I say they moved in in great numbers. Ethnic Chinese in Lhasa are now very worried people. Some who had been there for many, many years expressed to me their utter astonishment that this had happened. They had no sense of great ethnic tension being a part of life in Lhasa. Now numerous Hans that I spoke to say that they are so afraid they may leave the city, which may have very damaging consequences for Lhasa's economy, Tibet's economy. Of course one would expect that ethnic Chinese would think twice now about coming into Lhasa for tourism, and that's been a huge part of their economic growth recently. And leaving Lhasa, I was sitting on a plane next to some Chinese businessmen, they say that they would normally come in and out of Lhasa by train. But their fear now is that Tibetans will blow up the railway line. That it is now actually safer to fly out of Tibet than to go by railway. We have no evidence of Terrorist activity by Tibetans, no accusation of that nature so far. But that is a fear that's haunting some ethnic Han Chinese now.

Q. When you were told to leave, what were you told?

A. Well I had an 8-day permit to be in Lhasa. That permit began two days before the rioting, on March 12, and was due to run out on March 19. My official schedule was basically abandoned after a couple days of this. Many of the places on my official itinerary turned out to be hotspots in the middle of this unrest. They left me to my own devices. I was stopped by the police at one point, taken to a police station. They made a few phone calls and then let me go back out on the streets full of troops and police carrying out the security crackdown. They insisted however that when my permit did expire on the 19th that I had to leave. I asked for an extension and they said decisively no.

 

[Aussie2Aussie]

Hi 2020hindsight.
Keep in mind if China obviously thinks that a media blackout is less damaging to China's reputation than otherwise. This can be due to 2 reasons:

1. Chinese are using excessive force to quell the protest:
Possible, but there were no eye witness accounts as yet.

2. Chinese thinks that western media was only interested in spinning a story on police brutality. (Which they did anyway without conclusive evidence). After all, China never gets any good press abroad anyway so it is understandable.

I love a challenge, this is information much easier to come by than the phantom boycott of Sydney 2000.

Eyewitness: Tibet out of control
http://www.cafebabel.com/en/article.asp?T=T&Id=14318

Eyewitness: Tibet in riot
http://tibettoons.wordpress.com/2008/03/14/eyewitness-tibet-in-riot/

Tourists provide eyewitness accounts of Tibet unresthttp://www.abc.net.au/ra/programguide/stories/200803/s2194833.htm

Could keep going but but I got bored making my point. Google: eyewitness tibet - thanks for the key words juw, pity you did not check yourself first.

 

[Aussie2Aussie]

Last two questions from your CNN piece that amazingly you failed to post - so I will do it for you.

Q. So you weren't expelled? It just ran out?

A. Well we're in a gray area here. Because in theory China has been opened up to foreign journalists since January 2007, which means no longer, which was the case before, do we have to apply for provincial level government approval every time we leave Beijing for reporting. The official regulations don't mention Tibet. But orally, officials have made it clear that Tibet is an exception to these new Olympic rules and journalists who have made their own way there, unofficially, both before this unrest and during it have been caught or ... and expelled. Or those who have succeeded in making it out without being detected have been criticized by the authorities for doing so. So one could argue that yes I was expelled, if one looks at the regulations they've announced which one could interpret as meaning we have the freedom to be where we like. But in their interpretation, Tibet is an exception and in their view they were being rather liberal towards me by letting run to the end of my official permit.


Q. Is Dalai behind this?

A. Well we didn't see any evidence of any organized activity, at least there was nothing in what I sensed and saw during those couple of days of unrest in Lhasa, there was anything organized behind it. And I've seen organized unrest in China. The Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 involved numerous organizations spontaneously formed by people in Beijing to oppose, or to call for more reform and demand democracy. We didn't see that in Lhasa. There were no organizations there that ... certainly none that labeled themselves as such. These accusations against what they call the Dalai Lama clique, are ritual parts of the political rhetoric in Tibet. There is a constant background rhetoric directed at the Dalai Lama and his supporters in India. So it is not at all surprising that they would repeat that particular accusation in this case. But they haven't come across, haven't produced any evidence of this whatsoever. And I think it's more likely that what we saw was yes inspired by a general desire of Tibetans both inside Tibet and among the Dalai Lama's followers, to take advantage of this Olympic year. But also inspired simply by all these festering grievances on the ground in Lhasa.

 

[2020hindsight]

Keep in mind if China obviously thinks that a media blackout is less damaging to China's reputation than otherwise. This can be due to 2 reasons:

1. Chinese are using excessive force to quell the protest:
Possible, but there were no eye witness accounts as yet.

2. Chinese thinks that western media was only interested in spinning a story on police brutality. (Which they did anyway without conclusive evidence). After all, China never gets any good press abroad anyway so it is understandable.

First casualty truth you reckon? I guess the Dalai Lama was complaining about the crowds as well - threatening to resign etc - watch this space as they say.

and China has come a long way since Tien An Min Square, true.

Do the Chinese people fully support the current Chinese Govt you reckon?

 

[juw177]

Aussie2Aussie, I had to crop the article due to running out of characters. thanks for posting the rest. But you havent proven anything either with your angry posts. I dont believe Dalai is behind this either, they just needed someone to blame and they are not going to blame the Tibetans to isolate them more than they already are.

2020hindsight: Can't say, I have only been on holiday there. But what I do know is that the Chinese are well aware that their government is corrupt and censors etc, and are very critical of their government. Despite what you might hear, they actually take politics very seriously and discuss it openly.

However, you wont find any of them supporting Tibet independence because this is more they believe that other countries have no right to intervene with their politics. eg, I have met people from Iraq and Iran and it is no surprise how they feel about the US freeing them from their evil dictator. Oh and Tibet is also a part of China.

 

[Aussie2Aussie]

First casualty truth you reckon? I guess the Dalai Lama was complaining about the crowds as well - threatening to resign etc - watch this space as they say.

and China has come a long way since Tien An Min Square, true.

Do the Chinese people fully support the current Chinese Govt you reckon?

The Chinese love the status quo, provided there is food on the table (they have been educated that way) - that is where the government has been really smart by providing a selective free market economy.

 

[juw177]

that is where the government has been really smart by providing a selective free market economy.

Wow you are getting warmer there. That is the reason for violence all over asia, not just Tibet. Wealth inequality and inflation. See? You dont burn and loot your own capital city if what you want is freedom. But you might if you are poor and all you see are rich people and tourists roll into town.

 

[Superfly]

Wow you are getting warmer there. That is the reason for violence all over asia, not just Tibet. Wealth inequality and inflation. See? You dont burn and loot your own capital city if what you want is freedom. But you might if you are poor and all you see are rich people and tourists roll into town.

Juw... ur an Chinese embassy staffer right ?

 

[2020hindsight]

Wow you are getting warmer there. That is the reason for violence all over asia, not just Tibet. Wealth inequality and inflation. See? You dont burn and loot your own capital city if what you want is freedom. But you might if you are poor and all you see are rich people and tourists roll into town.

GOtta be some truth in that.
Also there is "growth to be had here". Even the Dalai Lama says he wants to stay with China to be dragged along with the development that's hapening. And all he wants is "meaningful autonomy". So "Free Tibet" (young activist term) needn't necessarily mean "Independence" in his eyes anyway (except that the students / youth have taken it that way).

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/18/tibet.independence/
Young Tibetans reject Dalai Lama's lead
March 18, 2008

While the Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibet, many younger Tibetans do not follow him on a crucial question -- whether Tibet should have genuine autonomy or independence from China.

The young activists who have organized "Free Tibet" marches around the world demand independence for a homeland most of them have never seen. Born in exile, they reject the Dalai Lama's "middle way" of seeking "meaningful autonomy" -- not independence -- from China.

The youth activists also call for an international boycott of the Beijing Olympics, something the Dalai Lama does not do.

The Chinese government considers Tibet an autonomous province, but many Tibetans say it is autonomous in name only. The Dalai Lama says the Chinese often treat Tibetans as second-class citizens in their own land. He argues that Tibetans need full and genuine autonomy to protect their cultural heritage.

The Chinese government rejects international calls that it talk with the Dalai Lama, insisting he is a "separatist" and that his "clique" masterminded protests that convulsed Tibet last week and have spread to three neighboring Chinese provinces.

Tenzin Tsundue, a 32-year-old Tibetan activist and writer, said the Dalai Lama's demand for authentic autonomy from China was "wishful thinking."

Personally I'm backing the Dalai Lama rather than the students. / activists.

Mind you, China sure can be a domineering govt (and perhaps necessarily so to some extent). I reckon to be able to impose the one-child policy for a start - and for people to live "half-happily" under that policy - just reflects a level of authoritarianism we can hardly comprehend.
https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4389&highlight=spare

However the Communist stuff went right off the rails in the 60s and 70s. Cultural Revolution was absolute stupidity. Knew a young Chinese bloke, was studying to be a doctor. The Red Guards kicked him out of uni to "go work the rice paddies"

Then there were Mao's dabblings in early industrialisation - turning every village into a metal foundry - melting down the cutlery etc to make anything and everything. Only trouble was they were totally halfbaked attempts. Not so these days of course.

 

[noirua]

There are a lot of people boycotting the Olympics. So I'm pulling out of the decathlon and high jump.

 

[Aussie2Aussie]

Wow you are getting warmer there. That is the reason for violence all over asia, not just Tibet. Wealth inequality and inflation. See? You dont burn and loot your own capital city if what you want is freedom. But you might if you are poor and all you see are rich people and tourists roll into town.

Lets not forget another nation taking over your economy, housing and jobs.

 

[juw177]

Juw... ur an Chinese embassy staffer right ?

Why did you make a poll if you were going to dismiss anything other than a yes vote as Chinese propaganda? So ignorant.

Lets not forget another nation taking over your economy, housing and jobs.

As I thought, you still havent read up on any facts.


2020hindsight: I read your thread regarding the one child policy. I thought that the policy just says the second child gets no benefits from the government but you are still allowed to have another if you are financially capable. I don't know about the social implications though, (maybe it is frowned upon by other Chinese who cant afford another child.)

Also, farmers are exempt from the policy. Tibet and many other minorities are also exempt. And guess what, just like the west, people in cities want money nowadays, not family.

There are 2 ways to combat over population. One is to discourage births, the other is to starve the excess population when you can't feed them. If only more countries will do more to tackle this problem, but there is only talk of not having enough consumers to support the baby boomers.

Agree that many suffered under Mao in the cultural revolution. See how the media never got rid of that stigma.

 

[disarray]

Agree that many suffered under Mao in the cultural revolution. See how the media never got rid of that stigma.

because communist china was built on repression at great cost in chinese lives and human rights. the same regime is still in power so no, the communist party will never erase the stigma of the great leap forward.

i would like to know if you do represent the chinese government in any capacity juw. it is common knowledge among the internet community that the chinese government has hoardes of people cruising internet forums and chat sites defending party policy. my friend who posts on another site is involved in an almost identical discussion with similar spelling mistakes (subtle but there) and similar tactics - blaming western media, telling us we are not researching etc.

china is in a difficult position, i see that. trying to keep a society of 1 billion people together is a massive task, and i agree sometimes people need the carrot and sometimes the stick.

part of the problem is cultural difference, particularly the asian psycology behind it all. society over the individual is paramount to many asian societies (particularly chinese with their confucian heritage) and so violations to the individual can be justified in keeping the wider society harmonious. western society is the opposite, we value the rights of the individual over the rights of the state and so see human rights as more important than the state (somewhat to its detriment imo)

so routine human rights violations by china which can be somewhat justified to chinese thinking are abhorrent to the west so people get all agitated about it. cue cultural clash.

what is happening in tibet can't be justified by the current western mindset. the chinese government moved in 50 odd years ago, installed a nuclear arsenal in the mountains, repressed the locals and started shipping ethnic Han in to populate and develop the area, gathering the wealth to themselves. this is wrong and we think the tibetans are rightfully pissed off. you keep pointing out tibetan violence and rioters but neglect the history that brought them to this state. that is the issue that needs to be addressed, similar to the whole aboriginal thing we just went through.

theres other culture clashes as well like western confrontation vs asian inscrutability, where we jump up and down and challenge china on various things where the chinese method of dispute resolution is more subtle. thats another area fraught with problems but its part of the world we live in and its cool.

 

[2020hindsight]

regarding the one child policy. I thought that the policy just says the second child gets no benefits from the government but you are still allowed to have another if you are financially capable.

No benefits or rather penalties. Then again, it's apparently been relaxed a bit lately due to "social stress".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

The one-child policy promotes couples having one child in rural and urban areas. The limit has been strongly enforced in urban areas, but the actual implementation varies from location to location.[5] In most rural areas, families are allowed to have two children if the first child is female or disabled.[6] Second children are subject to birth spacing (usually 3 or 4 years). Additional children will result in large fines: families violating the policy are required to pay monetary penalties
....
population policies and campaigns have been ongoing in China since the 1950s. During the 1970s, a campaign of 'One is good, two is okay and three is too many' was heavily promoted.

Recently, the policy has changed because the long period of sub-replacement fertility caused population aging and negative population growth in some areas,[11] and improvements in education and the economy have caused more couples to want to have fewer children.

In April 2007 a study by the University of California Irvine, which claimed to be the first systematic study of the policy, found that it had proved "remarkably effective".[12]

http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/onechild.htm
China has proclaimed that it will continue its one child policy, which limits couples to having one child, through the 2006-2010 five year planning period...
(but)
Now that millions of sibling-less people in China are now young adults in or nearing their child-bearing years, a special provision allows millions of couples to have two children legally. If a couple is composed of two people without siblings, then they may have two children of their own, thus preventing too dramatic of a population decrease.

But as for the bad old days of the Red Guards etc (gang of four etc) - Blind Freddie can see they've advanced miles since then. And sometimes you wonder if they are more capitalist that us. .

 

[juw177]

it is common knowledge among the internet community that the chinese government has hoardes of people cruising internet forums and chat sites defending party policy.

Common knowledge? Can you back this up and while you are at it, go and find just one repressed Chinese person? If you insult and generalise people of any country in this ignorant way, you will get the same response. Think about it, it makes no sense for the Chinese government to hire people to post on forums that no Chinese reads (it's censored right?). And if you read my posts, it is not hard to work out that I am in fact not typing in Chin-glish.

In case you missed it I will repost what I posted earlier:

What I do know is that the Chinese are well aware that their government is corrupt and censors etc, and are very critical of their government. Despite what you might hear, they actually take politics very seriously and discuss it openly.

However, you wont find any of them supporting Tibet independence because this is more they believe that other countries have no right to intervene with their politics. eg, I have met people from Iraq and Iran and it is no surprise how they feel about the US "freeing" them from their "evil dictator". Oh and Tibet is also a part of China.

 

[disarray]

Common knowledge? Can you back this up

go browse some internet forums with large tibetan threads going on

go and find just one repressed Chinese person?

sure. lots of them are here, like the falun gong protestors, or my taxi driver from a few weeks ago. i said "china is pretty cool now" and he said "you like it so much, you go live there, i'm sick of people saying china is good now"

If you insult and generalise people of any country in this ignorant way, you will get the same response.

???

Think about it, it makes no sense for the Chinese government to hire people to post on forums that no Chinese reads (it's censored right?).

sure it does. it's called propaganda and communist regimes excel at it.

And if you read my posts, it is not hard to work out that I am in fact not typing in Chin-glish.

never said you were typing chingilish. i indicated that i picked up a few minor typos which, with my ex-teachers eye, lead me to believe you are not a native english speaker. if i am wrong, i apologise.

soooo back to the question ... do you represent the chinese government in any capacity? i'd like to do an lookup on your ip address

In case you missed it I will repost what I posted earlier: Oh and Tibet is also a part of China.

the tibetans disagree. that's why we are having this discussion.

 

[Aussie2Aussie]

mmm, nothing I guess the embassy forgot to pay its broadband bill.

Very good points disarray, juw doesnt go so good when solid arguments are put in front of him/her.

 

[Superfly]

mmm, nothing I guess the embassy forgot to pay its broadband bill.

Very good points disarray, juw doesnt go so good when solid arguments are put in front of him/her.

Maybe comrade Juw has been shot for non-performance, ( in a ditch ) ...