[Note to readers:  this column was written a number of weeks ago, but was in holding as I wrote columns about some more immediate travel related subjects.  With the turmoil in Tibet this past week, it is clearly a topic in the news.  I have updated the prior column to include the recent upheavals.] 

When countries or cities submit bids for hosting the Olympics it is usually done with a great sense of pride and boosterism.  The governments and economic vested interests all look to hosting the Olympics as a way to showcase their “world class city”.  In the case of the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, it is clearly the goal of the Chinese government to make clear to the world that the formerly communist country is now a major player on the world stage.  The world has recognized and accepted the growing economic might of the country.  The Chinese government wants to make a further impression on the world that they are culturally and architecturally a world class nation.

I have written here about what has occurred in China over the last 20 years.  Basically they have collapsed the 200 year timeline of the U.S. to move from an agricultural economy to an information economy to a period one tenth in length.  This has never been done on such a magnitude, and as a result there have been many problems, as written here.  I think that this will be the reason that the 2008 Beijing Olympics may turn out …

I just returned from a trip through Normandy with my son.  The focus of our visit was the beaches of D-Day.   I was trying to connect a column billed as “A Future Look at Today” to the powerful emotions I was feeling.  On Omaha beach there is nothing on the beach to acknowledge what occurred on June 6, 1944 except for a very modern sculpture dedicated in 2004 for the 60th anniversary.  Nearby was a plaque with the words of the sculptor, Anilore Banon, as to his creative inspiration for his creation, “The Wings of Hope”

“So that the spirit which carried these men on June 6, 1944 continues to inspire us, reminding us that together it is always possible to change the future”

Connection made

Finally, the Dalai Lama was formally invited to visit a President in the White House. This week the Dalai Lama visited the White House prior to receiving the Congressional Gold Medal at the U.S Capitol. Finally, the leaders of the most powerful democracy in the world have stopped being bullied by China and have recognized one of the great spiritual leaders in the world, who is also a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

All the issues about lack of leadership in Washington D.C. that have been addressed here on this blog aside, hearty congratulations to the U.S. Congress and to President Bush for honoring one of the greatest living human beings on the planet. This is the first time a President has ever stood with the Dalai Lama in a public ceremony. Every U.S. President over the past four decades has been bullied by China to not give any public recognition to the spiritual leader of Tibet. This week, while President Bush compromised and met the His Holiness in the private part of the White House and not the Oval Office, and did not allow pictures, he did have his picture taken with him at the ceremony at the Capitol.

I have long admired the current Dalai Lama. I have casually studied Tibetan Buddhism and find it one of the more enlightened and open of all religions. I will never forget a day, when, as a young man, I first encountered the spiritual high of Tibetan Buddhists. …

I read an interesting article in the New York Times the other day.  The headline was “New Campaign Shows Progress for the Homeless” and the sub-headline quote was “Cost -benefit analysis may be the new expression of compassion”.  OK, lets read this.

 A little known, formally dormant, office in the Federal government called the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness has, in the last few years, launched a major initiative to reduce the number of homeless living on the streets by providing free housing. Evidently, the catalyst of this effort is a man named Philip F. Mangano, a Bush appointee who has spent five years visiting numerous mayors in an effort to coordinate efforts to get those that are homeless off the streets.  It was Mangano who spoke the above quote, as he uses ‘cost benefit analysis’ to persuade and financially support urban efforts to provide free homes, saying that it is cheaper to house chronically homeless people than to have them repeatedly visit shelters, soup kitchens, hospitals, drug centers and jails.

This entire approach has been modeled on a 1990s campaign initiated by a New York group called the Pathways to Housing.  The process was to get chronically homeless people into ’supportive-housing’ where they are monitored by social workers and offered psychiatric and other services in the hope of stabilizing their lives.  According to the article, in experiments around the country, 80% of such housed people remained in their quarters after a year.  Around the country, cities like Philadelphia and San …