In her blog for World Affairs called Everyday Asia, E. Sinclair’s piece titled "A Small but Stunning Shift in the Struggle for Tibet" reminds all of the human cost of freedom.  Sinclare writes:

This month marks the 53rd anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. It was March of 1959 when the Chinese took control of Lhasa. Soon after, the Dalai Lama fled to India. The China the world knew then is today unrecognizable in countless ways. The future of Tibet, however, remains unresolved.

In researching the current situation in Tibet, I paused when considering the following: Tibetan women have a long history of peaceful resistance. On March 12, 1959, in the middle of the Tibetan revolt against Chinese rule, Tibetan women organized a nonviolent protest in front of the Dalai Lama’s home in Lhasa. It lasted for weeks. An estimated five to fifteen thousand women came together to appeal for support against Chinese occupation. Afterwards many were imprisoned, tortured, or executed, including a woman by the name of Pamo Kusang.
 
I had not heard her name before. I was intrigued to learn that she was reportedly married to a low-level Tibetan official and is cited as the leader of the ’59 demonstrations by Tibetan women. According to the Tibet Justice Center, Pamo Kusang and others were “brutally tortured and mercilessly interrogated” while incarcerated for years. They remained defiant. In 1970, Pamo Kusang organized a protest from behind prison walls. A group of women marched together on prison grounds and chanted anti-Chinese slogans. Kusang was seized by guards and transferred to a notorious prison. Under interrogation there, she repeatedly refused to name names, insisting that she alone was responsible for organizing every protest in which she participated. For her defiance, she was among a group of women sentenced to public execution.

The crowd could hardly recognize them for they had suffered beyond imagination from many years of imprisonment. Pamo Kusang herself was crippled and had lost her hearing in one ear as well as her hair which had probably been pulled out by the roots. They were lined up in front of a pit and shot by firing squad in the back.
 
Such violence did not change the approach of Tibetan women in the decades to follow. Female Tibetan protests have, by and large, remained peaceful incidents. So much so, some experts observe, that only female gatherings sincerely honor the inherent beliefs of the Tibetan people’s commitment to peaceful protest. Now that is changing.
 
Tibetan women are setting themselves ablaze in protest of Chinese rule in small but increasing numbers, a radical shift from decades of nonviolence.
 
This month alone, four Tibetans have killed themselves by self-immolation, according to Radio Free Asia and other Tibetan watchdog agencies. Two were women. On March 4th, Richen, a widowed mother of at least three children (Free Tibet and the Tibetan Women’s Organization put that number at four) died after setting herself ablaze in front of a police surveillance station at the main gate of the Kirti monastery in eastern Tibet. The day before, a young student (reports vary in citing her age as either 19 or 20) identified as Tsering Kyi self-immolated in front of a vegetable market in Tro Kho Menma Shang village in Machu. These two troubling incidents are the first reports of Tibetan laywomen taking part in the recent spate of self-immolations.
 
In October 2011, for the very first time in Tibet’s history, a female nun died after setting herself on fire. In November, the second did so; in February of this year, a third. Since March 2011, at least 27 Tibetans have set themselves on fire in protest of Chinese rule; 19 have died. Five out of five females to take part have died from their actions. 
 
Tibet remains shut off; very few journalists have been able to get past the many checkpoints sequestering the story from the world. Almost no pictures and even fewer eyewitness accounts are making it to the international media.
 
In Beijing this month, the country’s leaders gathered under one roof in the Great Hall of the People for the annual National People’s Congress. One by one, China’s political leaders took to the stage to announce what the future will hold. A lower GDP. A lot more military spending. An effort to control inflation. Promises to fix the housing market. All engineered to maintain stability and calm at any cost in the face of a looming transition of power at the very highest levels. As the camera scans the audience, not a single member of the nearly 3,000-strong delegation leans to his or her neighbor to whisper, chat, or comment. Reportedly, talking is not actually allowed—an illustrative rule in light of the struggle in Tibet.
 
During the Congress, Wu Zegang, head of the Tibetan region in Sichuan Province where many of the self immolations are taking place, said that most of the people carrying out acts of self-immolation were shouting out separatist slogans such as “‘Independence for Tibet’ and others that are aimed at dividing the nation.”
 
Save Tibet reports that Rinchen, the widowed mother, shouted, “We need freedom!” before fatally setting herself ablaze. Was her aim to divide the nation, as Wu Zegang suggests? We can’t know. But in that moment, it was enough to convince her to abandon her children.
 
And so I pause when I consider this small but significant change, happening almost silently miles away from where each and every one of China’s leaders came together. When I read the words “for the first time” in the context of female self-immolations, I wonder, will that make people stop and take notice? Was that potential a motivating factor? Was it despair? Was it hopelessness? Did someone ask herself, “What can we possibly do now, that we haven’t done before?”
 
And when she found an answer, did she worry that decades of nonviolent protest would be discounted? Or did she simply believe there was no other choice? Whatever the answer, perhaps the most troubling question is whether it will make any difference.

Click here to reach: Everyday Asia by E. Sinclair.

Updated: Former NAACP leader C.L. Bryant and Dr. Alveda King are accusing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton of “exploiting” the Trayvon Martin tragedy to “racially divide this country.” 

“His family should be outraged at the fact that they’re using this child
as the bait to inflame racial passions,” Rev. C.L. Bryant said in a
Monday interview with The Daily Caller. 

The conservative black pastor who was once the chapter president of the Garland, Texas NAACP called Jackson and Sharpton “race hustlers” and said they are “acting as though they are buzzards circling the carcass of this young boy.”

Jackson, for example, recently said Martin’s death shows how “blacks are under attack” and “targeting, arresting, convicting blacks and ultimately killing us is big business.”

George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, killed Martin, a 17-year-old black man who was unarmed at the time of his death, last month. Zimmerman has claimed to have shot Martin in self-defense and has not been charged with a crime.

But Bryant, who explores the topic of black-on-black crime in his new film “Runaway Slave,” said people like Jackson and Sharpton are being misleading to suggest there is an epidemic of “white men killing black young men.”

“The epidemic is truly black on black crime,” Bryant said. “The greatest danger to the lives of young black men are young black men.”

To read more from the Daily Caller, click here.

Tuesday the Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle offers an interview with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece also criticizing the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson for politicizing the Trayvon Martin shooting and leveraging racial tensions to rile up Americans.

Dr. Alveda King, now the director of African-American outreach at Priests for Life and the founder of King For America, said she hopes Sharpton and Jackson stop “stirring up the people without positive solutions” in Sanford, Fla., and elsewhere in the U.S.

“I would believe that, by stirring up all of the emotions and reactions, I wanted to encourage them to remember the man that they say that they followed, to remember that his message was nonviolence and very loving,” King told The Daily Caller, referencing her late uncle. She added that she wanted to encourage Jackson and Sharpton “to talk about nonviolence and not to incite people with that race card that they are very good at playing.”

“Nonviolence was a very important part of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,” she added. “So, we want to encourage people to be nonviolent in their responses, to be thorough in their research and that justice must be done…We want justice to come, but we want nonviolent responses to this really tragic and terrible incident.”

King hasn’t made up her mind about the facts of this case and who is responsible for what, but believes there should be a full investigation. She told The DC that she agrees with former Republican presidential candidate and businessman Herman Cain, however, who has asked for a full investigation instead of “swirling rhetoric.”

To read more from the Daily Caller interview by Matthew Boyle, click here.

Updated: ABC reported from Seoul, South Korea that at the tail end of his 90 minute meeting with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, President Obama said that he would have “more flexibility” after his election.  Now the House and Senate are asking, "What flexibility."

The exchange was picked up by microphones as reporters were let into the room for remarks by the two leaders.

The exchange:
 
President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.
 
President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…
 
President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.
 
President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.
 
Click here for the video.

Monday a senior House Republican accused President Obama of going back on promises he would not weaken U.S. missile defenses through negotiations with Russia after the president was overheard promising more concessions after his reelection.
 
Rep. Michael R. Turner (R., Ohio), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces, sought an explanation for the overheard comments made by the president Monday in a discussion in Seoul with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.

Read more from Bill Gertz on The Washington Free Beacon.

Tuesday U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), entered the debate with concerns as he questioned U.S. Air Force General C. Robert Kehler, Commander of U. S. Strategic Command, about the reduction in funding under President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2013 (FY13) proposed budget and apparent shift by President Obama in the nuclear defense strategy of the nation in a release sent directly to Tulsa Today.  

Inhofe voiced his opposition to President Obama’s presumptions that he will “have more flexibility” to make a missile defense deal with the Russians after he is re-elected.  Inhofe provided the panel with an opportunity to make statements about the President’s statement to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that was caught on an open microphone, but they declined to offer any comments.  

Inhofe requested that U.S. Strategic Command provide an update on the current status of our nuclear weapons and platforms to include forecast service life.   

“Our nuclear arsenal is as much about deterrence as it is about strike capability,” said Inhofe.  “Under the New START deliberations, Congress was assured by President Obama that our remaining nuclear assets would continue to be modernized. Based on the cuts and delays to our nuclear arsenal and facilities in his Fiscal Year 2013 budget, President Obama is once again going back on his word.”  

Inhofe continued, “Another key concern is the reduction of our assets below the New START approved level of 1550.  It seems that President Obama is looking at unilateral reductions even further below the agreed upon limits under the treaty.  I remember back in 2008 when Secretary Gates said that we must maintain some level of these weapons ourselves to deter potential adversaries and to reassure over 30 allies and partners who rely on our nuclear umbrella for their security.”  

When questioned about the 10:1 superiority the Russians have over the U.S. in tactical nuclear weapons, General Kehler agreed with Inhofe that further reductions in our nuclear arsenal should include a reduction in Soviet tactical nuclear weapons.

U.S. Senators and doctors Tom Coburn (R-OK) and John Barrasso (R-WY) today released a report examining the impact and providing new conclusions about the consequences of the President’s health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The report titled, “Warning: Side Effects, A Check-Up on the Federal Health Law”, is their third oversight report since the enactment of the federal health law, two years ago.

Drs. Coburn and Barrasso write in the report:

“Over the past twenty four months, American families have learned more about the President’s health care law and do not like what they see.

“"Higher insurance premiums.  A coming state budget-busting Medicaid
expansion.  Fewer choices.  Less freedom and more government
interference.  Cuts to Medicare by unelected government bureaucrats. 
Thousands of pages of regulations.  An unconstitutional mandate to buy
health insurance. Penalties on employers threatening job creation. 
Billions of dollars in tax hikes and, once fully implemented, $2.6
trillion in new health care spending,” the doctors report.

"It’s no wonder that a majority of Americans oppose the law today. In fact, poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans want the Supreme Court to overturn the law.”

“The President’s health care law should be repealed, but also replaced with solutions that promote competition in the private market – not stifle it. As medical professionals, we know firsthand that we cannot just go back to the system we knew before the health care law was enacted. We believe that we can, and we must, fix what is broken in our health care system.”

The report explores additional “side effects” resulting from the President’s health care law, including the following:  

•   New “Medical Loss Ratio” Insurance Rules Which Could Cause a Collapse in the Insurance Market, Leading to Increased Costs and Fewer Choices
•    Millions of Americans Could Lose Their Health Insurance Plan
•    Device Tax Stifles Innovation
•    The Economy Faces Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in Tax Hikes
•    Findings from New Taxpayer-Funded Research Institute Could Be Used to Deny Payment for Patients’ Care
•    New Co-Ops Expected to Waste Taxpayers’ Dollars

Supporting documents:

CMS Memo on Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund (PCORTF)

Congressional Research Service Information on the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI)

Congressional Research Service Analysis of Public & Private Expenditures for Health Care in 2014

On Monday, March 5, the organization Invisible Children debuted its“Kony 2012” documentary on atrocities perpetrated by the African warlord, Joseph Kony, on his people.  The video depicts a war-torn northern Uganda where children are abducted from their homes, forced into rebel militias, and even sometimes killed.  While horrors are documented, Kony has not been seen in Uganda for the last six years.  

In this exclusive interview; Oral Roberts University Student Sarah Mirembe, a native of southern Ugandan, gives an account of her nation’s history and current struggle. 

Mirembe begins with the foundational fact that Uganda is divided into several tribes under a federal government.  The Acholi Tribe located in the northern region of Uganda, twenty years ago felt marginalized and lacking strong representation within the federal government.  This popular perspective grew after the overthrow of the Acholi president Tito Okello, in the 1980’s by the National Resistance Army (NRA), led by President Yoweri Museveni. 

As mentioned in Kony 2012, Joseph Kony, a member of the Acholi Tribe, emerged as the head of the Lords Resistance Army (LRA).  Kony claims to have been led by the Holy Spirit, in reclaiming the Acholi glory from the Museveni regime.  This led to a civil war within the northern region of Uganda.  In combating this insurgence, the Ugandan government, led by president Yoweri Museveni, initiated “Operation North.” 

It was reported that this operation was unsuccessful, because Kony seemed better armed than the government forces.  Some of Kony’s tribesmen were among the government forces sent to fight the rebels.  Kony viewed the Acholi involvement as betrayal, which resulted in the retaliation upon his own people.  Numerous atrocities were conducted by the LRA, among which were, abducting children, forcing the girls into sex-slavery and the boys into his militia.

In 2002, the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF), conducted a second military operation called “Operation Iron Fist,” and it was this operation that caused Kony to flee to the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Military conflicts ensued on the Uganda-Congolese, border, leading to an incident report to the U.N.

In 2006, the Ugandan government set up peace talks with Kony, in Juba, Sudan. Though Kony sent representatives, Kony never appeared, even with five attempts to finalize the peace agreement.  Operation “Lightning Thunder,” was also undertaken by Uganda, Sudan, DRC, Central African Republic, and a US logistical team, but Kony managed to escape, and continue his operations in the DRC and Central African Republic.

Mirembe mentioned how she is grateful for the efforts of the Invisible Children organization which has transformed lives in Northern Uganda.  The cause for justice is paramount, but she is concerned about the presentation of the information in the documentary.  She said Kony has not been in Uganda for six years.  Now northern Uganda is in a state of reconstruction and that people are finally returning to their homes after spending years in displaced persons camps. 

She said she welcomes the effort to “bring a criminal to justice” wherever he may be, but strongly believes the Kony 2012 video is misleading.  It does not reflect the current situation.  She feels that clarity is always a necessity in any cause and wonders what political agenda in what nation is driving this issue at this time.

The Blaze reported Friday that “Kony 2012” filmmaker Jason Russell was detained by police in San Diego March 15 for lewd acts, including being drunk, nude and masturbating in public. Following the incident, Russell’s organization “Invisible Children” released a statement saying that “The past two weeks have taken a severe emotional toll on all of us, Jason especially, and that toll manifested itself in an unfortunate incident yesterday.”

TMZ posted video Sunday of Russell’s nude tirade on a San Diego street corner in the middle of the day that shows an emotional breakdown at the least.  Click here to read the story with video on The Blaze.

About the author:  Kai Vincent Turley Good, a student at Oral Roberts University, moved from Maine to Oklahoma in 2009.  Good has authored two books, Excellence Body, Mind, and Spirit and A Jewel of the Realm, and currently sits on the board of directors for the Foundation for the Preservation of American Values.  As a member of the United States Martial Arts Hall of Fame, Good has taught self-defense at New Mission Self Defense, a studio he co-founded with his father in 2005.  He hosts At Issue, a political television talk show for ORU, and when returning to Maine for visits, he frequently appears on radio programs for Fox News WLOB.