Our May issue featured William Wharton's book review [2] of A Tibetan Revolutionary, memoirs of Bapa Phuntso Wangye—a Chinese Communist Party militant who became a dissident and advocate of autonomy for his native Tibet. Our May Exit Poll was: "Will Tibet explode again during the Beijing Olympics? Is there potential for an alliance between the Tibetans and Han Chinese workers and peasants against the Beijing bureaucracy? How about between the Tibetans and the Palestinians?" We received the following response:
From Joe Wetmore of Autumn Leaves Used Books [3] in Ithaca, NY:
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound? I think the real question is not will there be protests in Tibet during the Olympics, but whether China can hide them.
World War 4 Report replies: Your cynicism is vindicated by the fact that you are the sole respondent to our Exit Poll this month! Does the fact that all these movie stars have glommed on to the Tibetan issue paradoxically make it less fashionable? Sharon Stone [4]'s on the case, we don't have to worry. International Tibet coverage rapidly deteriorated from at least an effort to get out news of the repression despite China's media ban, to the spectacle of global protests around the Olympic torch, to nothing at all. Meanwhile, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy [5] continues to document nightmarish repression. But nobody is longer paying attention.
Is anyone else out there?
See our last post on Tibet [6], and our last Exit Poll results [7].
