May 23, 2008
5/29/08 Update: The Free Tibet Team Japan has created an excellent new petition site, so act now to facilitate a Tibet-China dialogue.
[Japanese version]
After thousands of Japanese protested at the torch relay in Nagano, a newly formed initiative, Save Tibet Network, organized 4,200 strong public members. This group called for a free Tibet during Hu Jintao’s visit in Japan. Within one month, an astonishing 32,000 signatures were collected in Japan for a petition to urge the Japanese government, the United Nations and the Chinese government to act immediately to solve the Tibet issue.
[Read more]
May 20, 2008
In the June issue of Fast Company magazine, Anya Kamenetz identifies Why the Dalai Lama Matters for business:
The eve of the 19th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests brings this timely and passionate essay from Robert Thurman, a Columbia professor, former Tibetan Buddhist monk, and father of the famous Uma. He makes the business case for developing a semiautonomous Tibet as not only an exclusive, Bhutan-like tourist destination and eco-preserve but also a Switzerland of Asia. He envisions it as a global finance center, with its own privacy laws, that would help free the flow of foreign investment on the continent. However utopian, Thurman is compelling on the point that a radical about-face on human rights is a prerequisite for China to grow into its role as a 21st-century superpower — a point that has been made in the Olympics-related protests. “Tibet’s problem is China’s problem and Asia’s problem,” he writes, “and therefore our global, individual problem — yours and mine.”
May 1, 2008
Rebecca Novick, executive producer of The Tibet Connection caught up with Robert Thurman in New Delhi recently and asked a few questions. Here’s an audio recording of their conversation.
A short version addressing “Why should we care about Tibet?” is also featured as an “audio postcard” at the end of the April 27, 2008 episode of The Tibet Connection radio show and podcast.
May 1, 2008
Audio and transcript available from On the Pursuit of Happiness: An Evening with Robert Thurman and Pico Iyer with Mark Gonnerman as moderator, at Stanford University Aurora Forum, April 24, 2008 .
Novelist and travel writer Pico Iyer joins Robert Thurman, Columbia University professor and founder of Tibet House in New York City, for a conversation on the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, education, life on the road, and things that contribute to happiness and human well-being.
