Dalai Lama issues support for Tibetan WiFi summit in India

Well, you don't see this at a technology conference every day. The Dalai Lama has issued a statement of support for the Air Jaldi Summit happening in October in Dharamshala. The Himalayan town is hometown-in-exile for the Tibetan government, and home to a mesh network project I've been reporting on for NPR and Wired News.

Here's the Dalai Lama's statement -- snip:

"The internet's contribution to the diffusion and dissemination of knowledge and information is truly remarkable.

"By itself the internet cannot feed the poor, defend the oppressed, or protect those subject to natural disasters, but by keeping us informed it can allow those of us who have the opportunity to give whatever help we can."

Previously:

* Tibetan mesh org hosting community WiFi event in India in Oct.

* Tibetan refugee WiFi org: we were DoSed, China IPs involved

* Xeni's "reporter's notebook" trek blog.

* NPR Day to Day radio series "Hacking the Himalayas":

Technorati Tags: Dharamshala, India, Tibet

Tibetan mesh org hosting community WiFi event in India in Oct.

Tech luminaries, big Silicon Valley companies, and Nepalese sherpas are heading to a community Wi-Fi hoedown this October in the Himalayan foothill town of Dharamshala, India. The agenda: connect the developing world with cheap, wireless mesh networks. I filed a report today for Wired News, after visiting the summit organizers in India:

In October, the Tibetan Technology Center will host the Air Jaldi Summit for wireless community developers from around the world.

Expected to attend is Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman and Wi-Fi pioneer Vic Hayes.

"We want to show people that it's possible not only to build out this kind of technology at low cost in developing areas, but that it's possible for the community to really integrate it into their lives," said Yahel Ben-David, a one-time Silicon Valley dot-commer who left his native Israel to build Dharamshala's mesh network.

October's summit will be less of a who's-who and more of a how-to, says organizer Oxblood Ruffin, who is a member of underground computer security group Cult of the Dead Cow.

In addition to representatives from Intel, Cisco and wireless activists from Europe, "Some sherpas from Nepal are coming," says Ruffin. "I'm trying to make the panels as diverse as possible, mixing grassroots activists, techies and enterprise folk in each."

Presenters will include wireless advocate and University of Limerick President Emeritus Roger Downer and Dave Hughes, who brought internet connectivity to the base of Mt. Everest.

Link. The "AirJaldi Summit" will take place in Dharamsala, India, October 22-25. As an aside, I'm told that the word "jaldi" means "fast" in Hindi. So the event name sorta means "fast wireless," in a bit of nerdy poetic stretch.

Image: Tibetan Technology Center CTO and co-founder Yahel Ben-David (with laptop) checks signal strength at an antenna site that is also a Hindu temple. To his immediate left, with his back to the camera, is the temple's resident: a Japanese priest the locals call Japani Baba, who has a laptop of his own. From far left to right, here are the other people in the picture: The man leaning on the temple is a Hindu priest who also maintains this site, along with Japani Baba. Next to him, a young Gaddi man from a village nearby. At far right in the red dreads, a mesh network project volunteer named Aurelion who was visiting from Europe and developing some nifty network monitoring apps with Ben-David. I climbed up on top of this temple and shot some pictures of the mesh network antenna and solar panel perched up there: Link. (Xeni Jardin, 2006)

Technorati Tags: Dharamshala, India, Tibet

Tibetan WiFi org: We were DoSed, China IPs involved

Tibtec.org, home-on-the-web for a wireless mesh network project aiding Tibetan refugees in Dharamshala, India, was reportedly the subject of a distributed denial of service attack today after being featured in Wired News. Snip from the update (I filed both reports):

Speaking to Wired News via Skype, project founder Yahel Ben-David said that while the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Tibetan Technology Center website appeared to come from IP addresses from a number of places around the world, they began immediately after scans from an IP address in China.

“There was no immediately evident single source for the attack, but it started right after an extensive series of China-based scans,” said Ben-David.

The tibtec.org website was featured in a Wired News story published on Thursday about the group's efforts to build a wireless mesh network serving Tibetan exiles. The site is built with Drupal, and runs on Apache.

Link. Image: Inside the Tibetan Technology Center's server room, an uninterruptible power supply buzzes loudly the morning after a big storm knocked out electricity. (Photo: © 2006, Xeni Jardin). Ben-David says the mesh network itself was unaffected by today's reported attack.

Previously on BoingBoing: Wireless Binds Tibetan Exiles.

Update: Ben-David said by email, "Here is the WHOIS information about the IPs involved in the attack."

whois 220.181.200.56
[Querying whois.apnic.net]
[whois.apnic.net]
% [whois.apnic.net node-1]
% Whois data copyright terms
http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.html

inetnum: 220.181.0.0 - 220.181.255.255
netname: CHINANET-IDC-BJ
country: CN
descr: CHINANET Beijing province network
descr: China Telecom
descr: No.31,jingrong street
descr: Beijing 100032
admin-c: CH93-AP
tech-c: HC55-AP
remarks: hostmaster is not for spam complaint,
remarks: please send spam complaint to anti-spam@ns.chinanet.cn.net
mnt-by: MAINT-CHINANET
mnt-lower: MAINT-CHINATELECOM-BJ
status: ALLOCATED NON-PORTABLE
changed: hostmaster@ns.chinanet.cn.net 20030620
changed: hm-changed@apnic.net 20050715
source: APNIC

person: Chinanet Hostmaster
nic-hdl: CH93-AP
e-mail: anti-spam@ns.chinanet.cn.net
address: No.31 ,jingrong street,beijing
address: 100032
phone: +86-10-58501724
fax-no: +86-10-58501724
country: CN
changed: lqing@chinatelecom.com.cn 20051212
mnt-by: MAINT-CHINANET
source: APNIC

person: Hostmaster of Beijing Telecom corporation CHINA TELECOM
nic-hdl: HC55-AP
e-mail: bjnic@bjtelecom.net
address: Beijing Telecom
address: No. 107 XiDan Beidajie, Xicheng District Beijing
phone: +86-010-58503461
fax-no: +86-010-58503054
country: cn
changed: bjnic@bjtelecom.net 20040115
mnt-by: MAINT-CHINATELECOM-BJ
source: APNIC

Technorati Tags: China, Dharamshala, India, Tibet

Wired News: "Wireless Binds Tibetan Exiles"

I filed a story and photos for Wired News today on the innovative tech underpinnings of the community wireless project I visited recently in Dharamshala, India. Snip:

Across the border from Chinese-occupied Tibet, the tech infrastructure in this high mountain village is a mess.

But a former Silicon Valley dot-commer and members of the underground security group Cult of the Dead Cow are working with local Tibetan exiles to change that using recycled hardware, solar power, open-source software and nerd ingenuity.

The Dharamsala Wireless Mesh is an example of "light infrastructure," a concept gaining popularity among tech developers: decentralized, ad hoc networks that can deliver essential services faster than conventional means.

Attempts to deploy similar community wireless networks in America have been blocked repeatedly by national phone carriers. It takes a big company like Google to build citywide Wi-Fi networks (the company launched its first in Mountain View, California, this week).

So sustainable network builders are going where they're welcome -- in this case, a rural village 7,000 feet up in the Himalayas.

(...) Some of the technical challenges [network project founder Yahel Ben-David faces] are unique. This may be one of the only networks in the world where antennas must be monkey-proofed.

"Monkeys are everywhere," says Ben-David. "Often, you'll see a huge, gorilla-sized monkey hang on to an antenna, swing from it, eat it, try to break it. We lost a lot of cables that way, but now we use very strong equipment so that even monkeys can't break it."

Link to article, "Wireless Binds Tibetan Exiles", and Link to an extensive photo gallery: "Dharamsala Dreamin'."

Update: Here's a discussion about this article on Slashdot: Link.

Previously: NPR Day to Day radio series "Hacking the Himalayas":

• Part 1: The Gaddi of Dharamsala
• Part 2: Connecting Tibet's Exile Community via the Web
• Part 3: A Wireless Network for 'Little Lhasa'
• Part 4: Tradition vs. Change in 'Lhasa Vegas'

Technorati Tags: China, Dharamshala, India, radio, Tibet

Dalai Lama will travel to Mongolia

AP:

The Dalai Lama plans to visit Mongolia next week, officials with his government in exile said Thursday, but they declined to provide travel details fearing trouble from China's communist regime. His Aug. 21-28 visit is being organized by Mongolia's largest monastery, Gandantegcheling, said Thekchen Choeling, a spokesperson for the Dalai Lama, in an e-mail.

Link

PRC head in Tibet: Dalai Lama "deceived his motherland."

Some excerpts from Der Spiegel magazine's interview with the head of the Communist Party in Tibet about the Dalai Lama, China's development policies in Tibet, and whether there are nukes stored in the region:

# Zhang Qingli: He did many bad things later on that contradict the role of a religious leader. The core issue is this: Everyone must love his motherland. How can it be that he doesn't even love his motherland? We have a saying: "No dog sees the filth in his own hut, and a son would never describe his mother as ugly."

# SPIEGEL: The Dalai Lama doesn't love Tibet?

Zhang: Tibet is the home of the 14th Dalai Lama, but China is his motherland. He deceived his motherland. He rebelled in the 1950s and in the late 1980s he incited unrest in Lhasa that was directed against the people, the government and society. He destabilized Tibet.

# SPIEGEL: But haven't there already been talks between representatives of the Dalai Lama and Beijing?

Zhang: His government-in-exile is illegal. Our central government has never recognized it. No country in the world, including Germany, recognizes it diplomatically. There are no talks between the Chinese and his so-called government-in-exile. The current contacts merely involve a few individuals from his immediate surroundings. The talks revolve around his personal future.

# SPIEGEL: There are rumors that China has nuclear weapons stationed in Tibet. Can you confirm this?

Zhang: I can assure you with all responsibility that this is all a complete fantasy. There is no nuclear weapons factory in Tibet.

# SPIEGEL: The Dalai Lama is 71. He has hinted that there may not be a successor or reincarnation. How will you react? Will you nevertheless encourage a search for a reincarnation?

Zhang: The current Dalai Lama is the 14th. We do not know how much longer he will live. We believe that good people live longer while bad people live shorter lives.

Link (Thanks, Oxblood Ruffin)

Travel HOWTO: shots I gots, and altitude data sites

Hey, speaking of vaccines...

I've tried many different sources for travel medicine in the past. Once, I went to the CDC (not to be confused with cDc). Some experienced travelers I know swear by the CDC for travel immunizations: their prices tend to be low, and who isn't used to the federal government sticking you in the ass already, right? But the one here in LA seemed very poorly managed -- and they won't always have what you need for remote places with exotic bugs. I have also used regular old general prac doctors, and the University of Southern California's travel clinic.

So far, the best experience I had was the place I used when preparing for this most recent trek: Healthy Traveler Clinic in Pasadena, a quick drive from Hollywood. The prices weren't always the absolute cheapest, but they were lightning-fast, always had everything I needed, were super well-organized, and *wired*.

I asked the administering physician, Brian Terry, whether it would be wise to pack altitude sickness meds for certain spots along the trek. I knew Tibet would pose problems, but wasn't sure about some of the sites in Northern India.

So while I'm sitting in the chair where he's just poked me full of rabies shots, he whips out his laptop and logs on to a website I'd never heard of that lists altitudes for darn near every city in the world: fallingrain.com. It takes a while for Dr. Terry to find the small towns I'm headed to (and there are a dozen possible spellings for "Dharamshala") but we do. Based on that data, he determines that altitude sickness will not be an issue anywhere I'm going -- except for Tibet.

More on how much altitude sickness sucks later, but above is a scan of my vaccination card. I think the rabies shots might come in handy more at home in LA than anywhere I might end up going next.

Getting shots and horsing down live typhoid bugs are among my least favorite things in life. But I'm glad I found this clinic, and I'd use them again. They even have a store on-site (and online) where you can buy mosquito netting, emergency mylar blankets, water purification kits, and the like. Plus they give you chocolate candies after they're done jabbing sharp syringes full of toxins into your flesh, which is, you know, thoughtful.

Technorati Tags: China, howto, India, Tibet

Nonprofit offers vaccines to Gaddi villages in India

Avnish Katoch heard "The Gaddi People of Dharamshala" -- part one of a four-part trek series I filed for NPR Day to Day -- and wrote in to share word of a US non-profit he's involved with, "My Himachal." Avnish says they're a "non-political, non-religious organization made up of people of Himachal origin and friends of Himachal Pradesh worldwide." They recently offered an immunization project for a remote Gaddi village in Himachal Pradesh, not far from the ones I visited. Link to Times of India article, and here's more on the MyHimachal.us website. Snip:

There is a large mandir/temple named after their Devta: Manu, the First Man in Hindu mythology. The clouds are low and beautiful, constantly sprinkling us with fine mist. It is full, hectic morning with many children showing up with their parents or grandparents. We immunize approximately 70 children, continue our diet/nutrition survey of the children, and measure their weight & height. Vitamin A & Zn supplements are given. Vaccinations include: MMR, BCG (for tuberculosis), Hepatitis B. AIDS Awareness literature is handed out.

SAHARA’s Kala Jatha theater is very popular and the skits elicit a lot of laughter. Some of the older village men join in with dancing. At the end of the street theater, more music is performed. Villagers do the local Himachal Pradesh dance, called a Nati with members of out Health Mela team joining in to form a large circle dance. The mood is very joyous and festive and the dance seems very symbolic of our connection here, high in the mountains.

Technorati Tags: Dharamshala, Gaddi, India, radio

China pledges "fight to the death" with Dalai Lama

A Beijing official has announced that China's communist government wants to end the "cult" of the Dalai Lama, and will expand crackdown measures throughout Tibet. This seems a significant escalation, and an intensity of tone not evident since the early 1990s. Snip from the Times of London:

China’s new top official in Tibet has embarked on a fierce campaign to crush loyalty to the exiled Dalai Lama and to extinguish religious beliefs among government officials.

Zhang Qingli, was appointed Communist Party secretary of the Tibetan Autonomous Region in May. An ally of Hu Jintao, China’s President, Mr Zhang, 55, has moved swiftly to tighten his grip over this deeply Buddhist region. (...)

In May Mr Zhang told senior party officials in the region that they were engaged in a “fight to the death” against the Dalai Lama. Since then he has implemented several new policies to try to erode the influence of the 71-year-old monk who China’s rulers believe is waging a covert campaign to win independence for his Himalayan homeland.

Ethnic Tibetan civil servants of all ranks, from the lowliest of government employees to senior officials, have been banned from attending any religious ceremony or from entering a temple or monastery. Previously only party members were required to be atheist, but many of them quietly retained their Buddhist beliefs. Patriotic education campaigns in the monasteries that have been in the vanguard of anti-Chinese protests have been expanded.

Ethnic Tibetan officials in Lhasa as well as in surrounding rural counties have been required to write criticisms of the Dalai Lama. Senior civil servants must produce 10,000-word essays while those in junior posts need only write 5,000-character condemnations. Even retired officials are not exempt.

Link to story. Image: HH Dalai Lama, shot by Lobsang Wangyal in Dharamshala, India, on the occasion of the 47th anniversary of the Uprising of Tibetans in Lhasa. (thanks, David Ahrendts)

Technorati Tags: China, Dharamshala, Tibet

Windies vs. Tiggas

Oxblood Ruffin, a member of Cult of the Dead Cow who's currently in Dharamshala working on the community wireless mesh network there, wrote in about this previous post: "Tigga, Please." Oxblood says:

I was walking down Temple Road today thinking about the "Tigga" thing. And just as I'm drifting with this, two Tiggas go one way and three Windies [Westerners dressed like Indians] pass the other.

Both groups are culturally displaced. But the Windies seem amusing since most of them will eventually go home and lose their kirtas. But the Tiggas can't go home. They're colloidal, unsettled, unassimilated. Their clothes are a cry for belonging, anywhere.

Being a victim of cultural genocide ain't pretty.

Technorati Tags: Dharamshala, India, Tibet