2 Dead as Protests Break out in Tibet

Ottomaton · Mar 27, 2008

foofy said:

http://news.tvb.com/630pm/lcd56.html?2008/0327/asx/01_56k.asx&2008%u5E743%u670827%u65E5 (%u56DB)

Listen to the sad tone of the shop owner at 3:08, who lost his relative and employees in the riot.
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After you listen to the sad tone of the crying monks who have been stomped on by China. I have no problem saying the shop owner has been wronged. I somehow doubt you are willing to reciprocate for the Tibetans.

Reginald Denny was wronged in the LA Riots of '92. That doesn't mean there wasn't some greater overreaching lesson to be learned from the riots. Same thing with the Houston Riot of 1917. Black soldiers destroyed all sorts of crap belonging to white people, so technically they are the criminals. The white racists had the law on their side. That doesn't mean that when the white cops beat the hell out of black soldiers, that it was right and just.

Tibetans are the n***ers of China. (I use that word only because it describes a relationship between the majority and minority)

SamFisher · Mar 27, 2008

yeo said:

Well, this may not be true for the other people, but your own credentials as an anti-Chinese racist and bigot has been pretty well established.
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Very well, I will start a HUG-A-HAN campaign to alleviate your fears. Come on up and hug me.

MR. MEOWGI · Mar 27, 2008

SamFisher said:

Very well, I will start a HUG-A-HAN campaign to alleviate your fears. Come on up and hug me.
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That's better than han job week.

Xenochimera · Mar 27, 2008

NYPD crackdowns Tibetans, even uncle sam bows down to the red dragon LOL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NU...147327/US-Cops-Attack-Tibetan-Protesters.html

yeo · Mar 27, 2008

Xenochimera said:

NYPD crackdowns Tibetans, even uncle sam bows down to the red dragon LOL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NU...147327/US-Cops-Attack-Tibetan-Protesters.html
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Nah, that's just how the NYPD operates. They WILL shoot you if you mess around.

yeo · Mar 27, 2008

Belgian police sets their dogs on Tibetans.

yeo · Mar 27, 2008

Ottomaton said:

Tibetans are the n***ers of China. (I use that word only because it describes a relationship between the majority and minority)
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MR. MEOWGI said:

Originally Posted by Rocket River
Why did the cops get off for beating Rodney King?
Because he kept moving and rising like some kind of 'animal'?

Because he was on drugs and deserved it.
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Somehow I feel those two quotes just belong together.

yuantian · Mar 27, 2008

yeo said:

Somehow I feel those two quotes just belong together.
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there are some real racists here on the board.

MR. MEOWGI · Mar 27, 2008

yuantian said:

there are some real racists here on the board.
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And China is proud of it.

yuantian · Mar 27, 2008

MR. MEOWGI said:

And China is proud of it.
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i don't think any chinese posters here that i know of posted any racist comments or view. you on the other hand, are openly racist.

MR. MEOWGI · Mar 27, 2008

yuantian said:

i don't think any chinese posters here that i know of posted any racist comments or view. you on the other hand, are openly racist.
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Nuh-uh.

yeo · Mar 27, 2008

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12585

Why They Hate China
Well, you have to hate someone…
by Justin Raimondo

China's continuing crackdown on Tibetan pro-independence protesters is a big, big issue here in San Francisco. Why, just the other day, I was coming out my front door, and there was one of my neighbors – a very nice woman in her fifties, albeit an archetypal limousine liberal, typical of the breed. So typical that she might almost be mistaken for a living, breathing, walking, talking cliché. She hates George W. Bush and the neocons because she's against the (Iraq) war, but she's eager to "liberate" Darfur – and, lately, Tibet. That morning, as she earnestly informed me, she was on her way to a meeting of the Board of Supervisors (our town council) to exhort them to vote for a resolution condemning the Chinese government's actions and calling for "freedom" for Tibet. What she doesn't realize, and doesn't want to know, is that she and the neocons – the very ones who brought us the Iraq war – are united on the Tibet issue. I tried, in vain, to point this out to her, but she just shook her head, cut the conversation short, and was on her way…

As it turned out, the supervisors voted for a meaningless, toothless resolution, stripped of provocative rhetoric, much to the dismay of the far-lefties who argued for a stronger statement. The initiative for this effort was made by supervisor Chris Daly, an obnoxious left-liberal with delusions of grandeur, whose pose of self-righteousness is both grating and characteristic of his sort.

Prior to the vote on the Daly resolution, which was vociferously supported by the supposedly pacifistic supporters of the Dalai Lama, the Chinese consulate was… firebombed. This is what the War Party would like to do to China.

Fortunately, there are a number of restraining factors that get in the way: in the meantime, however, our preening politicians demagogue the China issue, and none so brazenly as Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, my congressional representative, who is merely Chris Daly writ large. Traveling all the way to India, at taxpayers' expense, Madam Speaker visited with the Dalai Lama at Dharamsala and announced that if Americans don't speak out against Beijing's repression in Tibet "we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world."

Pelosi is a longtime opponent of Beijing – not just the Chinese government, but China itself. Pelosi and the unions she depends on for political support despise all things Chinese for the simple reason that China, today, is more capitalist than the U.S. – in spite of the Chinese Communist Party's ostensible commitment to Marxist ideology. Thinly veiled racist-chauvinist bilge is routinely directed at the Chinese people by union bosses and right-wing paleo-protectionists, who stupidly claim that the "chinks" (or, as John McCain would put it, the "gooks") are stealing "American jobs" – as if Americans have a hereditary right to the very best salaries on earth, a "right" that doesn't have to be earned by competitive business practices but is conferred on them by virtue of their nationality. Like hell it is.

Lucrative trade and cultural exchanges between China and California, as well as the fact that many Chinese in her congressional district have continuing ties to the mainland, have – so far – failed to deter Pelosi and her fellow Know-Nothings: politics, as they used to say during the Cultural Revolution in China, is in command.

These Sinophobic protests, engineered behind the scenes by leftist union bosses and God knows who else, are focused on the passing of the Olympic torch, which is slowly but surely making its way to Beijing, where the games are scheduled to be held Aug. 8-24. Here in the Bay Area, activists in the "Free Darfur" movement announced they were mounting demonstrations urging China to "extinguish the flames of genocide" in Darfur in San Francisco on April 9, the day the flame passes through the city.

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The hosting of the Olympic Games in Beijing is the focus of much pride in China, seen by the people as well as the ruling caste as symbolic of the nation's arrival in modernity. As such, the worldwide protests and political posturing of preening politicians – from Pelosi to Nicolas Sarkozy – are bitterly resented and have been met with increasingly shrill denunciations by the Chinese state-controlled media – a sentiment that probably understates popular resentment of Western criticism in the Chinese "street."

I know we are supposed to believe that the vast majority of the Chinese people are groaning under the weight of Commie oppression and sympathize (albeit silently) with the downtrodden Tibetans, but that is hardly the case. Indeed, the exact opposite is closer to the truth. Every time the West gets up on its high horse and lectures the Chinese government about its lack of "morality," the tide of anti-Western Chinese nationalism rises higher.

We saw this when the U.S. "accidentally" bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during Clinton's Balkan War of Aggression, and again when that American spy plane went down over Hainan island. In Beijing today, they are worried about the upcoming Olympic celebration, which will provide a platform for a wide variety of groups – including ultra-nationalist Chinese students, whose street antics have augured internal regime change in the past, and could do so again. "They are worried about a larger number of things and they are worried about keeping the lid on," according to Arnold Howitt, a management specialist who oversees crisis-management training programs for Chinese government officials at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. The same Associated Press article cites an unnamed "consultant" to the Games, who avers:

"'Demonstrations of all kinds are a concern, including anti-American demonstrations,' said the consultant, who works for Beijing's Olympic organizers and asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to talk to the media."

Any indications that Beijing is compromising Chinese pride and honor by appeasing the West are likely to be met by demonstrations that are both anti-American and anti-government – initiated, once again, by Chinese students, who have often been the agents of political transformation. Remember the Red Guards? Mao used them to initiate his own "Cultural Revolution," but was forced to rein them in when they started talking about overthrowing the Chinese state.

The memory of that dark and chaotic era haunts China's contemporary rulers, threatening to spoil their dream of a thoroughly modernized industrial powerhouse that is both the forge and the financial capital of the world economy. The Beijing Olympics represent the entry of China onto the world stage as a first-class power, right up there with its former adversaries: the U.S., Europe, and the former Soviet Union. A Chinese nationalist cannot be faulted for seeing the organized campaign to spoil that debut as a deliberate – and unforgivable – insult.

Viewed from this perspective – the perspective, that is, of the average citizen of China – the very idea of Tibetan independence might easily be seen as a rather obvious attempt to humiliate Beijing and remind it of its "proper" (i.e., subordinate) place in the global scheme of things.

After all, what if Chinese government leaders constantly reminded the world that the American Southwest was stolen from Mexico? Imagine the Chinese and Mexican ambassadors to the U.S. demanding independence, for, say, California – or better yet, its return to Mexican sovereignty! Shall the Olympics be forever barred from Puerto Rico, which was forcibly incorporated into the U.S. "commonwealth" in the invasion of 1898?

Of course not. Yet the Americans and their international amen corner are daring to criticize China for preserving its own unity and sovereignty. It's a double standard made all the more insufferable by the self-righteous tone of the anti-China chorus, whose meistersingers are mainly concerned with celebrating their own moral purity.

Yes, Tibet was forcibly incorporated into the Communist empire of the Han, but this was just an episode in the long history of Sino-Tibetan relations – for the greater part of which the Tibetans held the upper hand. The Tibetan empire, at its height, extended from northern India to the Mongolian hinterlands and came at the expense of the conquered Chinese and Uighurs. It fell apart due to a ruinous civil war. A key factor in this complex narrative is that Mongol hegemony over China was greatly aided by the Tibetans, whose conversion of the Mongol nobility to Buddhism legitimized Mongol rule. Today, pro-Beijing historians point to this period as proof that Tibet has "always" been a part of China proper, yet the truth is that both were slaves to the Mongols – the Tibetans as their collaborators, the Chinese as their helots. (Underscoring Mongol contempt for their Chinese subjects was an edict forbidding intermarriage between Mongol and Chinese, although no such barrier to Mongol-Tibetan congress was imposed.) With Buddhism as the state religion, Tibetan priests, including the Dalai Lama, became the avatars of Mongol rule.

In short, the popular narrative of the pacifistic Buddhist Tibetans as the good guys and the Han Chinese as the bad-guy aggressors is the stuff of pure myth, pushed by union propagandists, lefty Hollywood do-gooders, and trendy sandal-wearing Western camp followers of the Dalai Lama, who has become a secularized yet "spiritual" substitute for Mother Theresa.

If the Chinese are wrong to hold on to their province of Tibet, then Lincoln was wrong to insist that the South stay in the Union – and we ought to immediately either grant the American Southwest (and California) independence, or else give it all back to the Mexicans.

The same goes for Taiwan – China's rulers are no more likely to give up their claim to that island than Lincoln was inclined to let the Confederacy hold on in, say, Key West, Fla.

China is an adolescent giant: clumsy, unused to exerting its will beyond its borders, and wracked by self-doubt. Emerging into the company of world powers, it is thin-skinned – like any adolescent – and prone to wild mood gyrations. During the 1960s and '70s, the Chinese were in a distinctly bad mood as they wrestled with the ghosts and demons unleashed by Mao. The triumph of the "modernizers" over the ultra-left Maoists in the 1980s signaled a new mood of optimism and inaugurated an era of unrivaled economic growth. The regime sanctified China's journey down the "capitalist road" by citing the reformer Deng Tsiao-ping's most famous "Communist" slogan: "To get rich is glorious!" Ayn Rand meets Chairman Mao (or, rather, Confucius) – and the result is capitalism-on-steroids.

That's why, in spite of the sclerotic Marxoid ideology that still reins in and r****ds the natural entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese people, China is moving forward by leaps and bounds. That's also why comrade Pelosi and her union boss buddies have launched this odious Sinophobic hate campaign – because "their" jobs and sense of entitlement are going up in smoke. For decades, the U.S. government has preached the virtues of free enterprise and urged formerly Communist nations to adopt the free market – and now that the Chinese have taken them up on their offer, Western politicians are attacking them!

The closer China has moved toward our own system – relaxing totalitarian controls over the economy and allowing a far greater degree of ideological diversity than was possible during the Maoist era – the more hostile the U.S. government has become. Nixon went to China at the height of the Cultural Revolution, where he sat next to Madam Mao during a command performance of The Red Detachment of Women. These days, however, as China stakes its claim to a proportionate share of the world market – and Chinese investors fund the U.S. debt – the resentment and growing hostility of the Americans is all too palpable.

Why do politicians of Pelosi's ilk join hands with neoconservatives in a concerted campaign to antagonize China, and even threaten sanctions and possible military action when the occasion gives rise to the opportunity?

To begin with, China's is a success story, and there's nothing that attracts opprobrium like success, unless it's success of the wrong color – in this case, yellow. A crude racist collectivism of a specifically anti-Asian character has long been a tradition of the War Party in this country: see the anti-Japanese Dr. Seuss cartoons from the World War II era for a particularly vivid example. Yes, he was attacking the "Japs," but to Americans, it's all the same Yellow Peril. This kind of sentiment is easily invoked in America, and don't tell me Pelosi and her ideological confreres aren't aware of it – yes, even in "liberal" San Francisco, where anti-Asian sentiment is part of the city's history.

Never mind the first black president, or the first female president – what I'm waiting for is the first chief executive of Asian-American descent. I'm not, however, holding my breath…

Relations with China are cloudy, at best, and those may very well be war clouds gathering on the horizon. The reason is that Sinophobia is a point of unity between the Left and the Right: the union of the Weekly Standard and the AFL-CIO, and perhaps even the majority of my paleoconservative friends, who quail before the rising Chinese giant and see it as a potential threat on account of its sheer scale – a third of the world's population, and a land-mass that rivals our own. Surely such a stirring titan will knock us out of the way as he takes his place at the center of the world stage.

This reflects a fundamental error on the part of many conservatives, as well as liberals of the more statist persuasion. They fail to understand that there are no conflicts of interest among nations as long as their relations are governed by the market, that is by mutually beneficial trade agreements voluntarily entered into. Ludwig von Mises said it far better than I could ever manage, and I'll leave my readers to Mises' ministrations on this abstruse but important subject.

Suffice to say here that our relations with China on the economic front are a benefit to American consumers – that is, to all of us. They enable us to buy inexpensive quality products and keep the cost of living down. Protectionists who argue that "they" are "destroying American jobs" are simply arguing for higher prices – ordinarily not a very popular cause, and especially not these days.

Free trade is the economic precondition for a peaceful world and the logical corollary of a non-interventionist foreign policy. If goods don't cross borders, then armies soon will – a historical truism noted by many before me, and with good reason. Let it be a warning to all those anti-free trade, antiwar types of the Right as well as the Left – you'll soon be jumping on the War Party's bandwagon when it comes China's turn to play the role of global bogeyman. The way things are going, that day may come soon enough.

Finally, a word or two about this nonsensical demand, raised by the "Save Darfur" crowd, that China must somehow "extinguish the flames of genocide" supposedly carried out by the government of Sudan. What does China have to do with Sudan and its government? Well, you see, the Chinese have oil interests in the region, that is, they are engaged in competition with Western oil companies in opening up new fields – and, well, that just isn't permissible.

The Chinese, we are told, have a moral responsibility to either pressure the Sudanese to let up on Darfur, or else abandon their Sudanese assets. As if Sudan were a Chinese colony, and the Sudanese authorities mere sock-puppets of Beijing.

A more arrogant and self-serving argument would be hard to imagine. Presumably Western interests will fill the vacuum left by this spontaneous display of Chinese moral rectitude – and that alone should tell us everything we need to know about what's behind the "Save Darfur" bloviators and their high-horse moralizing.

If our professional do-gooders of the "progressive" persuasion are so concerned about the fate of Darfur, let them campaign for the granting of mass asylum to the survivors of this latest African catastrophe. Give them sanctuary and green cards, but keep U.S. troops out of Africa, specifically out of Darfur – and get off Beijing's back.

Like Russia, China is awakening from the long Leninist nightmare, albeit less traumatically, and with greater prospects for full recovery. However, it wouldn't take much to push it back into a revival of neo-Maoism – or worse – and a new dark age triggered by an external threat. A resurgence of Chinese ultra-nationalism in response to Western pressure – and the specter of U.S.-sponsored separatism – does not augur well for the cause of world peace. As is so often the case, we are creating the very enemies we fear, empowering and arming them ideologically. We are, in this sense, our own worst enemies.
~ Justin Raimondo
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yeo · Mar 27, 2008

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_keith_mo_080324_a_buddhist_struggles.htm

A Buddhist struggles to keep grounded about Tibet and China

by Keith Mothersson Page 1 of 1 page(s)

http://www.opednews.com

Every day I get two or three e-mails urging me to do something about the current unrest and repression in Tibet. Perhaps signing some of these petitions is helpful, but perhaps not. Feeling powerless is not a nice feeling for any of us, but sometimes the truth is that there is almost nothing we can do to influence events the other side of the world. Least of all if we are seen to be intervening in a hypocritical way, as part of a Western propaganda offensive. No matter our 'opposition' to the misdeeds of our own governemnts, 'Why don't we take the beam out of 'our' own eye first?', many in Tehran or Moscow or Beijing might be tempted to ask us - for our 'opposition' stance - however important to the construction of our own right-on identities, seems to them barely observable.

The following thoughts are shared at a time when Western Buddhists and other would-be consistent supporters of peace and human rights find ourselves joined by many mainstream Western media in 'championing the cause of the Tibetal people': Hmmm.

These same Western media which haven't reported the 'avoidable death of 1.3 billion people since 1950 on Spaceship Earth with the First World in control of the flight deck' to quote the veteran biologist and public health statistician Dr Gideon Polya of
http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ? Hmmm.

These same Western media who also downplay the scale of the West-attributable excess avoidable mortality figure in the the Middle East/West Asia wars since 1990, which Dr Polya puts around around 8 million: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/17139/42 . Hmmm.

These same Western media which have averted their eyes and ours from the ongoing Holocaust of 5-10 million dead in the new scramble for Africa taking place in the Congo: see Keith Harmon Snow's The War that did not make the headlines: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7957 ). Hmmm.

I should add that I write as a Buddhist who believes that we should try to put truth/reality before all comforting myths. Let all ideological camps and political 'sides' wash our own dirty linen, and not necessarily only in private either! For a good example of such public truth-telling, see Zen at War by fellow Zen Buddhist, Brian Victoria: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_at_War .

Let us start with the following report from a China Daily reporter which shows - surprise, surprise! - that Western media have been manipulating the news about Lhasa demonstrations. http://english.cri.cn/2946/2008/03/22/65@336718.htm

Whatever the truth about the scale and the brutal and/or relatively measured response by the Chinese, it is far from clear that the original protests which broke out recently in Lahsa were peaceful, or remained so for long.

Even those who are usually suspicious when the neocons start to champion the human rights of people living in or near Yugoslavia/Serbia, Iraq, Iran, Russia or China, seem all too ready to ignore the Dalai Lama's long term strategic alliance with - or use by - the CIA and the West.

This strategic alliance was most embarrassingly displayed when the Dalai Lama consented to receive the Congressional Medal of Honour from that same US Congress that has loyally voted credits for the illegal wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcXmB0U_DCQ&feature=related

At a time when the 'freedom-loving' West keep amping up the propaganda against Iran, Russia and Beijing, and the US surrounds all these countries with missiles and battleships, it seems to me most unlikely that US-led 'external pressure' on Beijng will lead China's rulers to look on Tibetan autonomy with favour.

Such pressures wll be particularly conuter-produective if the Dalai Lama is either happy to be praised as a 'man of peace' by 'President' (non-elect) Bush or so compromised that he can't avoid being required to do so as an integral part of the West's surging propaganda offensive. Instead Political Sociology 101 tells me that China will redouble its authoritarian vigilance, and refuse to believe that the Dalai Lama is sincere in his protestations of only wanting self-rule within China. What some hail as a great day for Buddhism, I feared was a tremendously unskilful move which will just make life harder for all the people of Tibet.

For supporters of popular freedom and social progress in Tibet to avoid being swept away in a media-concocted hysteria against China and all things Chinese in the coming months leading up to the Olympics, it will be helpful to read an article such as Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth, by Dr Michael Parenti.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7355

'For the rich lamas and secular lords, the Communist intervention was an unmitigated calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some discovered to their horror that they would have to work for a living. Many, however, escaped that fate. Throughout the 1960s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama's organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama's annual payment from the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also financed both him and other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment.

'In 1995, the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, carried a frontpage color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced by the reactionary Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the headline "Buddhist Captivates Hero of Religious Right." ....
'Into the twenty-first century, via the National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable sounding than the CIA, the U.S. Congress continued to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for "democracy activities" within the Tibetan exile community. In addition to these funds, the Dalai Lama received money from financier George Soros. (Heather Cottin, "George Soros, Imperial Wizard," CovertAction Quarterly no. 74 (Fall 2002).'

In November 2005 at Stanford University Nobel Peace Laureate, the Dalai Lama declined to condemn all use of force e.g. to defend and protect people. (Fair enough, for few of us are absolute pacifists. The devil lies in the detail of which applications of force people then identify as just or skilful, i.e. more life-protective than life-negating.) However as Michael Paenti continues:

' What of the four years of carnage and mass destruction in Iraq, a war condemned by most of the world -- even by a conservative pope -- as a blatant violation of international law and a crime against humanity? The Dalai Lama was undecided: "The Iraq war -- it's too early to say, right or wrong." (San Francisco Chronicle, 5 November 2005)

'Earlier the Dalai Lama had voiced support for the U.S. military intervention against Yugoslavia and, later on, the U.S. military intervention into Afghanistan. (Times of India 13 October 2000; Samantha Conti's report, Reuter, 17 June 1994; Amitabh Pal, "The Dalai Lama Interview," Progressive, January 2006.) '

Parenti concludes:

' To welcome the end of the old feudal theocracy in Tibet is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in that country. This point is seldom understood by today's Shangri-La believers in the West. The converse is also true: To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. ...."

"Tibetan feudalism was cloaked in Buddhism, but the two are not to be equated. In reality, old Tibet was not a Paradise Lost. It was a retrograde repressive theocracy of extreme privilege and poverty, a long way from Shangri-La.'

Yet the Dalai Lama has often portrayed an idealised image of Tibet and exaggerated the degree of popular opposition which the Chinese-imposed and Chinese-backed reforms engendered in Tibet in the fifties - and which actually left both the common people and the monasteries free to practice their religion to a much greater extent than subseqently obtained - i.e. in the context of the Tibetan struggle being taken up the the USA, with two brothers of the Dalai Lama actively involved with armed CIA-trained Tibetan liberation forces.

Parenti does mention the Dalai Lama's repeated praise of non-violence, and support for e.g. somewhat greater equality for Buddhist nuns compared with the monks. However, it is possible that he takes more care than is warranted not to risk offending Tibetan and other Buddhists by asking, as we now need to, whether there are deep-structural correspondences between Vajrayana Buddhism at the level of religion and a patriarchal-feudal social order which was admired by Hitler's SS and in some circumstances mutates into aggressive militarism, viz the religious zeal of Mongolian Genghis Khan or the Fifth Dalai Lama whose calls for a holy war of extermination mirror what we can read in Jewish/Christian holy books - or what some exponents of Imperial Zen advocated and practiced in Korea, Manchuria and China in WW2.

No such inhibitions detain two German scholars of Tibetan Buddhism, pro-feminists Victor and Victoria Trimondi (surely pseudonymns?) in their well-informed and comprehensive E-book, The Shadow of the Dalai Lama:
http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Part-2-09.htm

The Trimondis show with abundant examples that Tantric and 'Shambala warrior' mythology are full of bloodthirsty imagery, weapons, slaying, torture, etc. Reflecting real historical battles both defensive and agressive against Islam, strands in such mythologies also look forward to an ultimate showdown with Islam/unbelievers. Here is an excerpt from one disturbing chapter (Chapter 2-9: The War Gods behind the Mask of Peace
http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Contents.htm ) :

Political calculation and the Buddhist message of peace 'It is not the task of our analysis to make a personal choice between “armed rebellion” and the “ahimsa principle” or to answer the question whether violent action in Tibet is morally justified and makes sense in terms of national politics. We also do not want -as the Chinese attempt to do — to expose the Kundun as no more than a fanatical warmonger in sheep’s clothing. Perhaps, by and large he is personally a peace-loving person, but without doubt he represents a culture which has from its very origins been warlike and which does not even think of admitting to its violent past, let alone reappraising it."
"Instead, Dharamsala and the current Dalai Lama make a constant propaganda project of presenting Tibetan Buddhism and the history of Tibet to the world public as a storehouse of eternal teachings about nonviolence and peace. There is thus a refusal to accept that the Kundun first acquired his pacifist ideas (e.g., under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi) after his flight; instead it is implied that they are drawn from the inexhaustible inheritance of a many hundred year old tradition and history. Even the aggressive “Great Fifth” and the “Great Thirteenth” with his strong interest in military matters now appear as the precursors of the current “Buddhism of peace”.

'On the basis of this distortion, the current Dalai Lama is able to fully identify with his fifth incarnation without having to mention his warlike and Machiavellian power politics and murderous magic: “By holding the position of the Fifth Dalai Lama I am supposed to follow what he did, this is the reason I have to interfere”, the Kundun explained in 1997 (HPI 006). Thus there is much which speaks for the pacifism of the Dalai Lama being nothing more than a calculated political move and never having been the expression of a principle.

'Jamyang Norbu, co-director of the Tibetan cultural institute, thus accuses his “revered leader” (the Kundun) and his exile Tibetan politicians of fostering the formation of the western myth of the good and peaceful Tibet of old. At no stage in history have the Tibetans been particularly pacifist — the terrible fighting out of the conflicts between individual monasteries proves this, as well as the bloody resistance to the occupation in the fifties. “The government in exile”, says Norbu, “capitalizes upon the western clichés, hampers a demythologization, a critical examination of its own history” (Spiegel, 16/1998).'There is also absolutely no intention of doing this. For the Dalai Lama the fundamental orientation to be adopted is dependent upon what is favorable in the prevailing power-political situation. Thus a immediate volte-face to a fighting lineage is thoroughly laid out in his system. Neither religious, nor ideological, and definitely not historical incarnational obstacles stand in the way of a possible decision to go to war. In contrast, the Tibetan war gods have been waiting for centuries to strike out and re-conquer their former extended empire. Every higher tantra includes a call to battle against the “enemies of the faith”. In any event, the Kalachakra ritual and the ideology at work behind it are to be understood as a declaration of war on the non-Buddhist world. Important members of the Tibetan clergy have already reserved their places in the great doomsday army of Shambhala. „Many of them already know the names and ranks they will have.” (Bernbaum, 1980, p. 29, 30).
'When the political circumstances are ripe the “simple monk” from Dharamsala will have to set aside his personal pacifist tendencies and, as the embodied Kalachakra deity, will hardly shrink from summoning Begtse the god of slaughter or from himself appearing in the guise of a heruka. “The wrathful goddesses and the enraged gods are there,” we learn from his own mouth (before he was awarded the Nobel peace prize), “in order to demonstrate that one can grasp the use of violence as a method; it is an effective instrument, but it can never ever be a purpose” (Levenson, 1992, p. 284). There is no noteworthy political leader in the violent history of humankind who would have thought otherwise. Even for dictators like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin violence was never an end in itself, but rather an “effective instrument” for the attainment of “honorable” goals.'

Finally, as an engaged Buddhist I believe that we should not draw too big thick black lines between 'spirituality' and 'politics', since to do so would compound and mirror the conventional but illusory separation between 'the divine' and 'reality', and 'society' and 'self'. Among engaged Buddhist teachers I have learned the most from David Loy, Ken Jones and Thich Nhat Hanh. It would be nice to walk into bookstores and find their work represented alongside that of other fine teachers, but lo!, for some reason it is the Dalai Lama whose books have been so very heavily promoted in the West, even to the extent of describing him as some kind of all-Buddhist equivalent of the Pope for Roman Catholics.

For the health of Buddhism's continuing development in the West, do Western Buddhists now need to ask ourselves to what extent our understanding of spirituality has been subtly shaped by shadowy forces and corporate marketeers who for different reasons have considered it expedient to promote such a 'de-politicised' - or Western imperialist and privatistic - understanding of our dharma?

May all beings know peace, may all beings be happy.
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SamFisher · Mar 27, 2008

and we ought to immediately either grant the American Southwest (and California) independence, or else give it all back to the Mexicans.

- once again we are subject to thetired analogy of china defenders using 19th century manifest destiny practices in order to justify 21st century conduct.

This is a regular feature of Pro-CCP argument.

therack06 · Mar 27, 2008

SamFisher said:

and we ought to immediately either grant the American Southwest (and California) independence, or else give it all back to the Mexicans.

- once again we are subject to thetired analogy of china defenders using 19th century manifest destiny practices in order to justify 21st century conduct.

This is a regular feature of Pro-CCP argument.
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You only call it tired because you have no defense for it and thus we can use it again and again. The USA would not be the most powerful country in the world without its actions under "Manifest Destiny." Now it uses its soapbox that it would not have without Manifest Destiny to lecture other countries about human rights? Nobody would care about what the US thinks about human rights if the US weren't the most powerful country in the world.

This is even ignoring the fact that we are in fact paying to keep Tibet's economy running, not the other way around.

clutch11 · Mar 27, 2008

Ottomaton said:

After you listen to the sad tone of the crying monks who have been stomped on by China. I have no problem saying the shop owner has been wronged. I somehow doubt you are willing to reciprocate for the Tibetans.
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The "crying monks" show convinced me that Dalai Lama was masterminding the protests.

michecon · Mar 27, 2008

blahhhhh, human rights.........
Soudi Arabia whose human rights concept is based on sharia religious laws and not all that stellar is one of U.S.'s closest ally. Saddam's iraq was aided by the U.S. when it served U.S. interest.

Need it more to be said?

Ottomaton · Mar 27, 2008

clutch11 said:

The "crying monks" show convinced me that Dalai Lama was masterminding the protests.
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Seriously, I appreciate you are joking and being light-hearted which is welcome and good, but do you really believe the government claim all has been masterminded by the Dali Lama from India using his 'secret Dali clique'? Honestly?

namo · Mar 27, 2008

Ottomaton said:

Seriously, I appreciate you are joking and being light-hearted which is welcome and good, but do you really believe the government claim all has been masterminded by the Dali Lama from India using his 'secret Dali clique'? Honestly?
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Seriously, we all know that the past terrorist attacks in the US have been masterminded by a person from a central Asian cave, and now you have a hard time relating his holiness with the peaceful protests?

clutch11 · Mar 27, 2008

Ottomaton said:

Seriously, I appreciate you are joking and being light-hearted which is welcome and good, but do you really believe the government claim all has been masterminded by the Dali Lama from India using his 'secret Dali clique'? Honestly?
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Sure, the government will not tell u everything. I always call for more media freedom in China. China can't compete with West Countries if there is only one major television network that provides people nationwide news.

And my answer to your question is：YES, I believe the riot is masterminded by Dalai and his clan.

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