If the world looks away, anything could happen.

Right now,the best help for Tibet is our attention.

Someone should go to Tibet and ask the less wealthy people who live there who are NOT either Han Chinese or former overlord Buddhist monks what they think of the situation. I haven’t heard much at all from those people, but what little I have heard indicated that they definitely didn’t want the old slave state back even if they did want the Chinese out.

Asking a Tibetan monk about the Chinese presence in Tibet is like asking a Confederate Colonel about the Yankee presence in the deep South, and those of us here in America who swallow their responses whole without questioning them are too blind and irresponsible to have a relevant opinion.

Consider: protest in China can get you jailed, tortured, killed and certainly poor. In view of all this, why are people still protesting? I can only conclude that the alternative is worse.

If they are willing to die for a free Tibet, then Tibet under Chinese domination must be bad.

I can tell you that from personal conversations I have had with a member of old Tibetan nobility, he anyway does not even dream of a return to feudalism.
That is past history. He wants a free Tibet – not an exchange of oppressors.

Protest in Tibet under the old system that the Buddhist monks ran could also get you tortured and killed… and the article isn’t about ordinary poor people in Tibet protesting Chinese rule, it’s about Buddhist monks protesting Chinese rule. Again, it’s the equivalent of a bunch of Confederate Colonels protesting Yankee rule in the deep South.

You say that from what you’ve heard, “ordinary Tibetans that do not belong to old wealthy families still want their independence and their culture.” That’s no doubt true, but it has little to nothing to do with Buddhist monks protesting the Chinese presence in Tibet, since it was those same Buddhist monks who used to use them as slave labor, torture and kill them at will, and keep them impoverished.

I lived in China for six years, and I can tell you first-hand that ordinary Han Chinese see their government as a liberator of the oppressed poor in Tibet. I make no statement regarding the accuracy of that opinion, but it is further evidence that any automatic assumption about conditions in Tibet based solely on what the former slave owners say is gullible foolishness. It also tells me that righteous indignation at the Chinese man in the street over what happens in Tibet is misplaced and unfair.

These Tibet discussions always compare apples and oranges. Zimbabwe was a racist state before ZANU took over. Does that mean that Robert Mugabe doesn’t need to have his ass kicked out for destroying the country? Icing Mugabe doesn’t mean going back to colonialism. Freeing Tibet doesn’t mean going back to feudalism. Specious arguments.

Xeni Jardin? Can you comment, having been there?

http://www.noiblau.com

A better analogy might therefore be that the monks are like Catholic priests calling for home rule for Ireland in the early twentieth century.

I guess the Olympics are being held in China because something like over 15 to 20% of the world is Chinese and they wanted to host it.

No, because the 15-20% of Chinese did not get the vote I’d imagine. I’ll not stand behind Takuan and Antinous’ interpretation without some extensive research, but the idea that China got the Olympics because of having a majority of the world’s people doesn’t make much sense. Global issues are never that simple. And you’re right: I don’t know if the current regime is ‘that’ bad compared to the last regime. But if it is ‘bad’, on it’s own right, it is wrong. In Iraq, Afghanistan? They are waterboarding in Guantanamo Bay. My home country. To people who may or may not be terrorists. I don’t care if those people -are- terrorists. I care that they are Schroedinger’s Terrorists, and evidently the only way you know if they are criminals is because they admit to being one when being tortured. I’m cheering on OUR regime change. I’m cheering on Iraq being conducted less like Vietnam and more like a charity mission. If we focused on rebuilding (WITHOUT corrupt officials and companies) we’d get a lot more done. And sure, Hussein might have been bad, but I don’t see that we’re much better. His evils do not excuse ours. Possible Buddhist evils do not excuse possible, provable Chinese evils.

You talk as though the rule of the monks is ancient history. 1959 is not the Stone Age, the Dalai Lama is the same age as my father, and a great many of the ruling class survived the coming of the Chinese.

As for your final statement: “Freeing Tibet doesn’t mean going back to feudalism.” We’re not talking about “freeing Tibet” here unless you accept without question whatever rhetoric the monks hand you… again, this isn’t a protest by ordinary people the article is talking about, it’s a protest by monks.

I know that if I was a member of Tibet’s displaced ruling class, I’d want as many friends as I could get on the international scene, and I’d be canny enough to recognize that the powerful and very vocal Americans respond remarkably well to phrases like “human rights”.

I think one would have to spend several years in Tibet to understand the real situation there and form an opinion worth squat. I haven’t. Xeni Jardin hasn’t. Very few Westerners have.

I don’t have an opinion as to whether or not Tibet is properly part of China, and I wasn’t “smuggling in” any ideas by comparing Buddhist monks with Confederate Colonels.

I said (and meant) from the very beginning that I don’t side with either the Buddhist monks or the Chinese government, because I think they both have their own slant on things and I’m certain the truth lies somewhere in between. You, on the other hand, seem to think that one side is right and one wrong, and that you know which is which. Your arrogance is as offensive as the way you shove words into my mouth.

I find it absurd and repulsive that I am being accused of having an agenda and taking sides when what I am in fact doing is pointing out that both sides have an agenda and that neither should be trusted.

I think one would have to spend several years in Tibet to understand the real situation there and form an opinion worth squat.

Should we enslave you for a couple of years, too, so that you can form a worthwhile opinion of slavery. More specious arguments. You sound remarkably like the propaganda arm of the Chinese government.

You are starting to smell suspiciously like the underside of a bridge.

I find it repulsive that the side with the balance of probabilities in its favour is characterized as making the lesser argument appear the greater.

“Objectivity” when blood is being spilled is of questionable morality. First: stop the violence. Then it can be sorted out.

As to agendas: on the internet, no one knows you are a dog. You could be PLA. I could be PLA,

Why are we holding the Olympics there anyway?

1. One who knows others is clever, but one who knows himself is enlightened.

2. One who conquers others is powerful, but one who conquers himself is mighty.

3. One who knows contentment is rich and one who pushes with vigor has will.

4. One who loses not his place endures.

5. One who may die but will not perish, has life everlasting.

Officially, the carrot half of the carrot and the stick.

Really, because we’re all desperately trying to sweet-talk them into correcting the trade imbalance so that we can sell them shit.