In previous U.S presidential race, candidates mainly expressed their political programme or introduce themselves through traditional media. While in 2008, all candidates have largely utilized the new media to approach voters. Through the internet, the candidates are leaving the old-way street into a modern interactive playground with the public. In this essay, I intend to explore this phenomenon from diverse perspective.

Firstly, let us have a look at several new methods of information transfer which are adopted in 2008 U.S presidential election.

The candidates’ home pages
All candidates manage to extend their reach to new groups of supporters and donors through their home pages. For example, Mrs. Clinton has considerable success in generating internet cash since almost running out of money earlier 2008 when many of her tradition high-value donors had given the legal maximum of $2,300 to the primary campaign. Raising money on the Internet is regarded as the most inexpensive method, compared to convention methods such as events, telemarketing and direct mail campaigns.

The candidates’ blog
In 2004 U.S. presidential election, only one candidate Howard Dean set up his own election blog. That much-publicized online method helped Howard Dean attract much young voters. While in 2008, nearly all candidates set up their election blogs and the public can put comments on the article or video of those blogs. In addition, some candidates create a section for links to private blogs related to them, John McCain 2008 for example.

The portal with interactive function
A great number of famous portals set up on-line interactive sections for 2008 U.S. presidential election, which aim to provide a place for people who are interested in the same candidate or similar topic to exchange their opinions.
The most popular video sharing website YouTube has set up a channel “You choose ‘08” for U.S. presidential election. It is regarded as an outlet for advertising their candidacies by candidates. Moreover, voters can view candidate statements and make video supporting (or opposing) presidential candidates. Some commentators even criticize the presidential candidate’s YouTube video by making their own video. They think YouTube is a medium to get their voice heard.

Actually, new media plays an important role in 2008 U.S. presidential election. It has overtaken the traditional media to become the dominant method to issue the news, run the campaign, communicate with the public and attract votes.

Nowadays, candidates’ websites are the major source of information on election news. For example, 2 to 3 pieces of news are issued on Hillary’s election website every day.

Moreover, those election websites have set up the News & Media channel to issue their own press release or reproduce the related news from mainstream media. It is believed that reprinting the news from mainstream media is helpful to attract young voters because the youth regard the internet as their first choice to get information rather than traditional print, radio and television media. Most articles are neutral and objective though they are selected by editors and favorable to candidate.

Finally, in order to approach an increasing number of Hispanic Americans, Hillary and Obama both create the Spanish version of their election websites. The multiple choices of language give the website an advantage over the tradition media.

It has been more than one month after the Tibetan unrest erupted at the “roof of the world” since the mid-March. With the two sets of propaganda machines, different kinds of news, stories, and analysis were produced and spread all over the world. Some of the basic facts become clear to most people simply with a little effort to read both sides: peaceful protests led by Tibetan monks began on March 10th; violence used by Tibetans against other ethnic Chinese broke out between 14th and 18th; buildings and vehicles burned, while people were injured, killed, or arrested.

But is what has happened simply caused by Tibetans calling for their independence, or was it ethnic tensions between Tibetans, Han Chinese, and Hui Muslim, or was it the “Dalai Lama Clique” that plotted and incited riot William Engdahl provided some behind-the-scenes information in his article “Why Washington Plays Roulette with China”, which is surely controversy but deserved much attention, since mainstream media tends to neglect these kind of news.

He pointed out right in the beginning that “Washington has obviously decided on an ultra-high risk geopolitical game with Beijing by fanning the flames of violence in Tibet just at this sensitive time in their relation and on the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.” He continued that “it’s part of an escalating strategy of destabilization of China which has been initiated by the Bush Administration over the past months, and which includes the attempt to ignite an anti-China Saffron Revolution in the neighboring Myanmar region, bring US-led NATO troops into Darfur where China’s oil companies are developing potentially huge oil reserves.”

What Engdahl said might sounds dramatic and implausible, but he doesn’t neglect evidences to back up the facts. The Dalai Lama fled out of Tibet with help from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1959 and “according to declassified US intelligence documents released in the late 1990s, ‘for much of the 1960s, the CIA provided the Tibetan exile movement with $1.7 million a year for operations against China, including an annual subsidy of $180,000 for the Dalai Lama.” The actors behind all the Tibet actions “tied to the US State Department, including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the CIA’s Freedom House through its chairman, Bette Bao Lord and her role in the International Committee for Tibet, as well as the Trace Foundation financed by the wealth of Georage Soros through his daughter, Andrea Soros Colombel.”

The NED is a significant player here. The NED was founded under the Reagan administration in the early 1980’s, with the suggestion made by the director of the CIA at that time. It “was designed to pose as an independent NGO, one step removed from the CIA and Government agencies so as to be les conspicuous, presumably.” However, as its first president, Allen Weinstein commented on the Washington Post, “A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

With the helps, financially and diplomatically, of the NED, many pro-Dalai Lama Tibet independence organizations have kept running. For example, the International Campaign for Tibet was founded in Washington in 1988. “Since at least 1994 the ICT has been receiving funds from the NED. The ICT awarded their annual Light of Truth award in 2005 to Carl Gershman, founded of the NED.” Another US-based organization is Students for a Free Tibet, “founded in 1994 in New York City as a project of US Tibet Committee and the ICT. Other NED-financed entities includes the Tibet Times newspaper, the Tibet Multimedia center for “information dissemination that addresses the struggle for human rights and democracy in Tibet”, and the Tibetan Centre for Human rights and Democracy.

How much of William Engdahl’s research is reliable and trustworthy? It’s hard to tell. At least he provided alternative information other than that which is disseminated through the mainstream propaganda. In the end, it’s all up to the reader whom to believe.

Ever since the chaos of the Tibetan unrest in mid-march, there has been a growing voice outside of China criticizing the East Asian country and its torch relay prior to the Beijing Olympics due to the ongoing issues of Tibetan independence. Many have pointed the finger at the Chinese organizers of the torch run for creating a path that would clearly face potential protesters, but no one had predicted a tidal wave of this scale to rise up against the Chinese government.

It is easy to blame the Chinese government for organizing the potentially chaotic path; it is even easier for China to give in to all the foreseeable problems. However, the Chinese government allowing the torch run to continue despite the inevitable protests is a sign that the world is a different place than it was during the days of the Cold War. This year’s torch relay is a significant symbol of the direction in which the world is going, one where we confront our differences.

Many have already known that the torch run is merely a creation of the German Nazi government for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, as Gwynne Dyer pointed out in his op-ed in South China Morning Post: “… the revived Games got along without an international relay race just fine for 40 years before the Berlin Olympics – but if there was one thing the Nazis did well, it was propaganda.” Some would say as it is such an inherently ‘fascist’ creation and must be cancelled. However, the torch relay is not only about its history, but also about its symbolism. It’s a symbol of the true spirit behind the modern and overly-commercialized Olympic Games, and it is meant to be an apolitical showcase for athletic talent on a global scale. The pride that every torch runner has had as being a part of this global community, contributing to the total distance, and finally lighting of the Olympic flame, represents a potential uniting of the world behind one purpose.

The East and the West have always been at odds with each other over the history. But in a time of increasing globalization and interconnected livelihood, each person must do their part to understand one another and encourage such understandings through an open discussion. It’s not often cited that the Olympics is a product of Western creation, which have begun in the days of Ancient Greece, the birthplace of Western philosophy, literature, and politic. It’s also obvious to see that the large majority of summer and winter Olympics have taken place within the Western world. Despite this bias, however, China, the largest country in East Asia, has been graciously given this gift to display the coming together of East and West, which gives the opportunity of discussions and, thus, further understanding between the two.

The world has clearly come a long way from the bad old days of the Cold War, during which the Olympic Games to be held in Moscow were fully boycotted by 62 countries (led by the USSR’s rival, the United States), which killed countless athletes’ hopes and dreams. Now, the governments are hesitant to do that and would rather just declare an individual boycott, which is a much more civil way of raising discourse on the issue. But this discourse must continue in an inclusive manner. The Chinese voices should not be shut out from Western media and Western voices should not be censored by Chinese media.

The torch relay is one of the most significant components of the Olympic Games and is a symbol that’s necessary for a global effort towards partnership. The symbolic nature of the torch relay is an important aspect of how we see ourselves and each other in this global community. This is why we must continue running the torch, as the editorial in Sydney Morning Herald states: “The Games – and the protests – must go on.”

2008 U.S. presidential election is shaping up to be the first $3 billion presidential race in U.S. history, The Fortune said in 2007.

At that time, campaign-finance veterans predicted that the top-tier primary candidates would need to raise $100 million. Now, it seems the prediction is literally accomplished.

Regularly, the two Democratic presidential candidates generate more than $1 million a day through small donations on the internet. Hillary Clinton even raised around $0.5 million in one hour after Pennsylvania primary ended.

According to the latest figures, Obama has raised more than $40 million via a donor base of more than one million individuals in March while Hillary Clinton raised half of that. Besides, McCain collected $15 million for his campaign in the same period.

Latest development of the Chinese Cargo Ship that was carrying weapons for Zimbabwe- the An Yue Jiang. The ship was refused to be landed in Durban port, South Africa last week, and it was reported the ship then had been headed to Angola.

But yesterday a report from allAfrica.com said the ship has already been recalled by China. The news was confirmed by the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Jiang Yu in a press conference.

Although the weapon shipment has sparked an uproar in the west, and also in some African countries like South Africa, Mozambique and Tanzania, but official from Zimbabwe government said “It is our sovereign right to buy arms from anyone to defend ourselves. And you defend yourself from enemies and not civilians”.

From the Chinese side, it is stressed that the arm deal was made last year and has nothing to do with what is happening currently in Zimbabwe. “The Chinese Government always adopts a prudent and responsible attitude towards arms export and one of the important principles it adheres to is non-interference in the internal affairs of recipient countries,” Jiang Yu said in the Tuesday press conference.

For voices from civic action group, I came across this blog called “This is Zimbabwe” through Danwei. It is calling for petition to stop any arm shipment reaching Zimbabwe before the crisis is resolved.

Back in 2001, there were strong disagreements with the decision by the International Olympic Commission to award the 2008 Olympics to Beijing because of China’s poor human rights records. The voice to boycott the Beijing Olympics has been continued for the past seven years with purpose-built websites like Boycott the Beijing Olympics to call for international action. The the boycotting issue has been further aggravated by Darfur crisis, which began in 2003, and Tibet unrest, which took place in Lhasa in mid-March.

Here is a list of public figures who have openly called for boycotting the 2008 Olympics, mainly due to China’s financial and diplomatic support of the Khartoum government in Sudan: former French presidential candidate François Bayrou, actor and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow, Genocide Intervention Network Representative Ronan Farrow, author and Sudan scholar Eric Reeves, filmmaker Steven Spielberg, the The Washington Post editorial board, among others.

Since this march, some high-ranking politicians have announced publicly that they will not attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, including Secretary-general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon; the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown; the German chancellor, Angela Merkel; Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk; the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus; and Japanese royal family. Although most of them have said they had not planned on going to Beijing anyway, their decisions have been seen as adding pressure on China’s involvement in Darfur and treatment of Tibet.

If all the effort they made is to stop the ongoing violence in Darfur, then will boycotting the Beijing Olympics, which is originally supposed to be an apolitical sports event, make a real difference? If all they are hoping for is the best of Sudanese, then where is their voice?

In an article from The Christian Science Monitor, Sudan’s Olympic athletes refuse to boycott what Darfur campaigners called the “genocide games”. Like most other athletes, they want to win metals and show their talent, but not only focus on their country’s problems. Ismail Ahmed Ismail is a Fur, whose tribes have suffered under janjaweed militias, and Abubaker Kaki Khamis is from Arab, whose militias were the forerunner of the janjaweed. Despite all the ethnic conflict, they are roommates in the Sudanese athletics team. Mr. Ismail said “We don’t think: These are Fur, there are Arab. It doesn’t matter here.” He continued “talk of a boycott makes me angry. We have people in the team from Darfur who are running. If we lost the chance of the Olympics, we would have to wait another four years before having another chance.” Another athlete, Nawal El Jack, who is a 400-meter runner in Sudanese athletics team express the same opinion: “People only think of bad things when they think of Sudan. Beijing is our chance to show people that we can do good things too.”

Athletes from other countries have shown similar concern. For instance, Athletes from Switzerland’s international Olympic Committees “rejected any boycott of the Beijing Games and said sport should be kept separate from politics despite China’s poor human rights record.” They said in a statement that “boycotts are pointless and senseless – and only hurts the athletes… with so many issues and conflicts in our world, if we allow our event to be the place to raise them, this would change the essence of what we are there to do – to compete athlete against athlete in the spirit of respect, friendship and fair play.”

As an article from the Telegraph concluded, “Dozens of states are guilty either of domestic human rights violations or of foreign belligerence or both. If we boycotted each one, our sportsmen would find half the world barred to them, and we should barely export any goods…The Olympics have never quite lived up to their ideal as a symbol of peace and international brotherhood. From the start, there was gamesmanship, commercialization, cheating and one-upmanship. But, for all that, they represent something worth celebrating: a common endeavor whereby athletes from every country compete under agreed rules and accept the results.”

I came across to an interesting article on the Guardian, with the Title “Whether Clinton, Obama or McCain wins it, prepare for a big letdown.”

After Clinton won Pennsylvania primary, many predicted that this is a good thing for McCain. Because Hillary did well enough to stay in the race, but not so well as to start swinging it the other way. And voters started to question Obama’s political experience and real ability compare to his perfect speech. People are questioning whether he could fulfill 1/10 of what he promised during his speech.

Interestingly, in the article, suppose Obama wins, “Well, people around the world would be thrilled – and filled with hope. That would be his first problem. The worldwide expectations are so high that they can’t possibly be fulfilled, any more than Princess Diana could return to being an ordinary human being. ”

“If McCain and Clinton have question marks over their experience of government, they look like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln compared with Obama. His inexperience has showed on the hustings, and it would show even more in the Oval Office. He has never run any big organisation; now he would step into the biggest.”

And to McCain, the writer describes him as “His mindset is of his age: in Iraq, he is in some deeper sense still fighting Vietnam. And he is a very American hero. His appeal across the seas is distinctly limited.”

And what if Hillary wins, the writer seems to select Mrs Clinton as his favorate one to win. “I continue to believe that Clinton is better equipped to be a good president for this time. Despite her recent braggadocio about Iran (”we would be able to totally obliterate them”), I think she has the temperament, experience and mindset to be what the world needs in Washington for the next four years”

After the pennsylvania primary, more and more people turned out to believe that Hillary has a big chance to win more support from superdelegates. For Obama still can’t win more support in the big states, and for Hillary, the unconventional first lady, is really tough to deal with. Hillary Clinton’s most striking feature is her tenacity. She never quits. And between Super Tuesday and Pennsylvania, Hillary tries to brand herself not as the one all people like , but the one people trust more in the White House.

When 15 U.S. politicians wrote in a letter “it would be clearly for you to attend the Olympic Games in China, given the increasingly repressive nature of that country’s government” to Bush, the White House said Mr. Bush would attend the opening ceremony in Beijing.

Then several demonstrators scaled the Golden Gate Bridge to show “Free Tibet” banners during the torch relay in San Francisco and the White House reiterated that Bush’s plan to attend the opening ceremony had not changed.

Now, all the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates urged Bush to miss the ceremonies, the White House still said Bush would attend Beijing Olympics but did not announce his specific schedule and rule out the possibility of Bush missing the opening ceremony.

Bush seems to compromise, however, he has not given any definite indication he will skip the event even though British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy all have announced that they would not appear at the opening ceremony in Beijing after riots in Tibet.

Everyone is paying attention to Bush’s final decision and some said his final decision might cause a challenge to U.S. role as the symbol of democracy and human rights.

But is there any possibility for Bush to demand that China’s government reform itself and receive west-style democracy overnight as a condition of his attendance? If four-year Iraq war and thousands dead has not brought freedom and democracy to that nation, how can Bush’s several-hour attendance change China’s politics agenda?

“A lot of countries say, ‘ well, if we say that we are not going to the opening ceremonies, we’ve checked the box on Tibet,’ That’s a cop-out,” U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley said at the interview of Fox News Sunday.

He also suggested that what the world ought to do was sending the message clearly to the Chinese that this was an opportunity, with the whole world watching, to show that China took into account and were determined to treat their citizens with dignity and respect.

For U.S., the opening ceremony is a much closer access to talk with China and a much bigger stage to show her respect to democracy and human rights. So do other countries.

Shrill protests about CNN’s commentator Jack Caffertu filled the air in recent days. His remarks about Chinese goods and the Beijing government inflamed a community which is already angry about international condemnations directed at the host country of the upcoming Olympics. The website anti-cnn.com, which aims to document inaccurate foreign coverage of the recent unrest in Tibet, has achieved over 500 thousands hits everyday.

So far, the founder Mr, Rao Jin said the site had collected more than a dozen inaccuracies or exaggerations on the Western press. The website’s supporters argued “foreign news media frequently write about censorship in the Chinese press, so they should be forced to see their own bias”.

Every time the Chinese citizen complaint about the Beijing government’s censorships on the news, the western media stands as a symbol with justice and neutral. But it seems western attitudes towards Tibet has triggered searing critiques by the Chinese this time. Even South Metropolis Daily, which is one of the most critical newspapers in China, ran a full-page story documenting the “unbelievable variety of errors” by the western media.

The Chinese is no fool, or they would not have great feelings of Chinese government’s strict controls over free expression. Therefore it is not an easy job to trick the Chinese on China-related news. In terms of Tibet issue, the Chinese have more knowledge and understanding than most western reporters.

On the other hand, during the torch relay, when the foreign protesters with “Free Tibet” banners were asked to point out the exact location of Tibet on the map, they had no idea. They said the matter was not where Tibet was and the matter was “Free Tibet”.

Yes, the matter is not where Tibet is. The matter is the long-standing image of China’s lack of human rights and democracy in western views. The matter is the European and the American have begun to regard China as a grave threat to them. According to a recent Harris opinion poll for the Financial Times, China has overtaken the U.S. as the greatest threat to global stability in the eyes of Europeans. Also, the recent Gallup Poll finds that China has replaced North Korean as U.S. third enemy in the eyes of Americans with the fact that more American name China rather than the United States as the world’s leading economic power.

The coverage of international news is usually in consistence with a country’s own political agenda and foreign policy. It is likely that in order to find a wavelength to in tune with the people’s perceptions of China, the reporters will cover the stories in a certain angle and find the evidence to support their presumption.

But, except for preconception of western media, China’s government took the unworthy battle at first. They did drive all reporters out of Tibet when the protest began

The western world has already used its previous experience to conclude that China has an authoritarian government. Without reporters’ experience and reports from the scene of Tibet protest, how can the Chinese government convince the world that is a violent protest?

No evidence, No retort.

In 2006, China’s relevant authorities formulated a regulation to facilitate news coverage by foreign journalists before and during the 2008 Olympic Games. This is a major turning point. In doing so, China will have the authority to insist that others hold a more objective and fair attitude towards China.

But if China’s government dares make that promise, she has to keep it.

For China, being open does not mean allowing others to determine China’s political and social existence in an environment.

Also, for western media, having free speech does not mean abusing it. It is just as the slogan of anti-cnn.com said “we are not against the western media, but against the lies and fabricated stories in the media”.

A few days ago I was talking with a British friend about Tibet. She asked, “why won’t China give Tibetan people a referendum and let them decide if they want independent or not? since neither you nor I know exactly how the masses of Tibetan people are feeling (about independence)?” I thought about this and the answer i could give her back then was “theoretically you could say so, but realistically China will not allow this to happen because it is about sovereignty and strategic concern.”

But thinking back, this question still puzzles me. What is really the international norm about it?

Reading Dr.Goldstein’s article The Dalai Lama’s Dilemma on Foreign Affairs(1998) helps me to understand the above “tibet question” better. In the opening paragraphs, he says,

As a classic nationalistic dispute, the Tibet question pits the right of a people, Tibetans, to self-determination and independence against the right of a multi-ethnic state, the People’s Republic of China, to maintain what it sees as its historical territorial integrity. Such disputes are difficult to resolve because there is no clear international consensus about the respective rights of nationalities and states. The U.N. Charter, for example, states that the purpose of the world body is to ensure friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination, but it also states that nothing contained in the charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters that are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.

The ambiguity about when entities have the right to seek self-determination has made international opinion an important dimension of such disputes, and the struggle to control representations of history and current events is often as intense as the struggle to control territory. In the case of Tibet, both sides have selectively patched bits and pieces of the historical record together to support their viewpoints. The ensuing avalanche of charges and counter-charges is difficult to assess, even for specialists.

One thing i didn’t mention enough in my previous post is that start from 1986 to 1987, the Dalai Lama and his exile community started a range of political activities to gain international support for Tibet’s cause. In 1987 the Dalai Lama appeared for the first time as political leader in the west. On September 21, the Dalai Lama made his first political speech in the United States Congress. It was a well-planned and powerful speech, and he said Tibet was independent at the time when China invaded and accused the Chinese of serious human rights violation. Main points in his suggestion to solve the Tibet problem included transforming Tibet into a “zone of peace” and demanding the withdrawal of Chinese troops and reversing the dangerous population transfer policy. The area that he demanded political autonomy at that time not only includes the Tibet Autonomous Region(political Tibet), but also the ethic Tibet in nearby western regions. Beijing invited the Dalai Lama for a talk in 1989, but the Tibetan exile government discouraged the Dalai Lama from going since they felt they were getting the momentum. And soon after riots broke out in Lhasa in 1989 and the Chinese government declared martial law, the door of negotiation was shut.

After 1989, the hard-liners from the PRC government decided to “coddle” Tibet no more and began to restrict previous ethnic policy but continued to accelerate its economic policy. Huge Han Chines influx got into Tibet and from Goldstein’s point of view, this was an essential policy that was “changing the nature of Tibet” since “over a thousand years of recorded history, through wars, conquest, and external domination, Tibet remained the exclusive home of a people”.

So Beijing in the 90s had little interest in engaging talks with the Dalai Lama. The Tibetan exile government was losing the real deal – “the ethnic and economic character of Tibet”.

The Dalai Lama was forced into a corner with basically two choices – serious compromise or escalation. Both options were hard for the Dalai Lama to take, as Goldstein argues. Adopting the former one, the Dalai Lama risks of losing both political support from his own exile community and economic support from the west. The latter option runns against his commitment to nonviolence, but “it may be difficult for him to prevent, even if he personally opposed it”.

Compromises from both Beijing and the Dalai Lama to preserve the ethnic and cultural integrity of Tibet within the framework of the Chinese state may be the best and most realistic solution for the Tibet problem.

But why has such kind of compromises so hard to reach? Goldstein sums it up with one sentence, “there simply is too little trust and too many powerful reasons for not taking a risk.” And today with most media from both the PRC and the west only reinforcing existing clinches and charges and pointing fingers at each other, i fear it would only deepen the distrust from both sides.