Au Waipang on Tibet

I felt sure Yawning Bread in Singapore would address this, and he just has.

…This was a planned and coordinated campaign. A column of exiled monks in India started off around March 10 from the Kangra district that surrounds Dharmsala, the Tibetans’ capital-in-exile, attempting a months-long march to reach Lhasa in Tibet as the Beijing Summer Olympics gets underway. Meanwhile other columns started off from monasteries located within Tibet itself, including the Drepung monastery near Lhasa. More recently, we’re hearing reports that Tibetans — I’m not sure whether they’re monks or lay people — in various towns of Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai have also demonstrated in the streets.

My most watched VodPod items

On this blog’s pod, the top item is us thinking of what to do for our next blog. Do look. It is really cute.

The Pod is in the side bar.

Over on New Lines from a Floating Life:

1. Kevin Rudd apologises to the Aboriginal Stolen 45 views
2. Albinoni, Adagio in g minor 37
3. Erhu Performance - Yuan (Predestined Relationship) 35
4. Pachelbel Canon in D Minor 29
5. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last speech 24

On OzPolitics:

1. The Stolen Generation 60
2. The Seekers - The Carnival Is Over. 50
3. AustraliaQuest: Aboriginal history 44
4. Paul Keating - The Redfern Address 37
5. 1. Apology to the Stolen Generations 33

Posts for Holy Thursday 2008

On New Lines from a Floating Life I follow up on Thomas’s post on Barack Obama’s Philadelphia speech. In the afternoon I added Yawning Bread’s views on Tibet.

Floating Life Sans Words lives up to its title with Holy Thursday: Tintoretto “Last Supper” but strays a little on Train set for Morris Iemma? Then I couldn’t resist About the Tom Roberts painting in the side bar…

STATS NOTE: Sitemeter

So far this month Sitemeter says the various Floating Life sites have had 7,439 visits and 9,010 page views (as at 1.30 pm). March 2007 totalled 8,919/12,833. However, at that time English/ESL was included in the count… To date, English/ESL has had 5,832/7688 this month. The real comparison then is to 13,271 visits and 16,698. Just thought I’d mention that.

Obama in Philadelphia

Some have compared Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia yesterday with Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream.” Others are a bit less enthusiastic.

Yesterday in Philadelphia, Barack Obama delivered his speech about race and his relationship with Pastor Jeremiah Wright.   Some reviewers I’ve heard considered it to be on a par with Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream.”  I seriously doubt it, and will be surprised if it is remembered or revered as long, by so many of all ethnic groups and nationalities.

As oratory goes, it wasn’t even one of the Senator’s best.  The introduction was stock Obama verbiage, the same emotional, historic prelude we’ve heard before.  (Am I the only one who keeps waiting for him to get to the point?)  That “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” suggests that Black churches and their memberships share similar views.  His comparison between Pastor Wright and the older white grandmother who raised Senator Obama was inappropriate.  The latter shared her personal fears and prejudices of two generations ago in private with her grandson – for whom she cared despite his bi-racial heritage.  The Pastor, on the other hand, shouted his prejudices from the pulpit of his church to teach his parishioners, impressionable children and budding politicians among them.