Those are the choicest words from my thoughts over some news that I caught up with yesterday. If you're not comfortable with curse words, please do not read ahead since I'm going to vent it out here... (you've been warned)
China has decided to rape the eco-system by making a road to the base camp of Mt. Everest! I've no better words to express my disgruntlement for such disrespect towards nature. As ridiculous as it sounds, they are doing it to present themselves in as many ways as possible for the upcoming 2008 Olympics there!!! Mt. Everest is not your regular bungee-jumping game or some Olympic fete. She's someone whom innumerous followers worship as a Goddess, nature lovers want to witness her sheer glory survive unto eternity, trekkers for whom she's a lifetime achievement, something so close to heart; she's someone who stands tall on the top of the world whispering to the heavens!
On one hand, we have US killing the environment with GHG while on the other, China planning something unthinkably absurd. I wonder what China plans to do post-Olympics 2008, perhaps a decade down, when Mt. Everest, a mother to many glaciers, starts receding? To hell with the world too, as its always been with China, but what are the Chinese going to drink for survival? Their own waste, I suppose!
The only sane suggestion I've heard as a movement against such inhuman step is that the Olympics board should put their foot down against Beijing 2008.
3 comments:
IM
While you are right about the environmental threat and boorishness of the Chinese, there is a more sinister under-current.
The Himalayas have always been the protectors of India and been a formidable defence even during the previous Chinese attacks (remember, Hindi-Chinki bhai bhai?).
Well obviously the Chinese dragon is firing from the Olympic shoulder (or should I say 'Olympic flame'?). The secret preparations for the road and plans to make railway network to Nepal are nothing but future war plans. If the highest point in the Himalayas is so easily accessible to the Chinese, they will have the same advantage that the handful of mercenaries and Pakistani soldiers had in Kargil some years back. Only the Chinese are never going to be 'handful' and shy about it.
I think the Americans will be truly happy about this development because this will mean that both India and China remain more preoccupied in defence spending than in building stable value-added economies.
I hope our defence establishment is doing a realistic risk assessment of the situation and gearing up to be prepared for future wars.
But of course, thats the case, Gotya. However, I purposely kept this issue outside this entry, purely from the ecological perspective.
Coming back to security issue, I've a book that opens up a (failed) mission of Mt. Everest being planted with some (nuclear) spying devices lots of years back by US for monitoring China! Those devices were seemingly misplaced and no one knows where they are, meaning what kind of polluted threat we are already under!
I think the fight for power between countries has gone beyond too far long back without care for anyone or anything. I don't think there's ever coming back from that!
... and while we're at it anyway... if the Chinese Road leads to Mt. Everest, before the world knows, Nepal will be sucked in as a part of China!
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