Tag Archives: Dalai Lama

In the Leigh of the Storm

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“Because we all share an identical need for love, it is possible to feel that anybody we meet, in whatever circumstances, is a brother or sister. No matter how new the face or how different the dress or behavior, there is no significant division between us and other people. It is foolish to dwell on basic differences, because our basic natures are the same.” — Dalai Lama

So our little Occupy group met with Colorado Springs City Council member Tim Leigh the other night. He came to meet us at our regular haunt, graciously provided by independent local business the Cafe Corto.

Tim is an affable dude, and our meeting seemed to go well, at least in the sense that we were able to develop a rapport with him and come away with a sense of friendliness, if not friendship. Tim is a self-described member of the 1%, an appellation that derives from specific statistics involving wealth which has acquired connotations as a result of Occupy that Tim may not be so quick to embrace. Fact is, i really don’t know enough about the guy to decide for myself whether or not he deserves application of the darker connotations or not. The group at the meeting is as diverse as any formed in October’s Occupy crucible, and as has been characteristic of the movement in general, each in attendance holds individual interpretations of just what Occupy is, and what we mean to accomplish. Good ol’ Thomas, in the course of his regular series of uncontrolled and only marginally civil outbursts, vehemently denied we constitute a “movement.” Others sought mostly to find little political fulcra with which to pry at Tim’s scales, (in case he’s a shape-shifting alien, i suppose). None of this was surprising–we are a group dedicated to disruption of the entrenched, monied status quo, working within a rough framework of fairly aggressive expression worldwide, if nothing else.

Tim weathered the various clods of dirt whipped up by the wind as one might expect from either a politician, which label he denies, or a very rich real estate wheeler-dealer, which would be ludicrous to attempt to gainsay. I don’t have the motivation to dig up lots of facts about Tim Leigh’s business dealings, but we know well enough that his name is on an awful lot of buildings around town, and he lives on a tidy and isolated landscaped lot up on the Mesa, where the houses are all overpriced, the better to keep the riff-raff away. His house is almost certainly bigger than yours. No one is apt to be shocked by those minor revelations. In fact, his now predictable assertions to be “in the same boat” as we would be fairly ludicrous to the casual observer, except that i think he’s right on the money with that one, though perhaps not as he sees it. Thomas asserts that we are an issue-driven–something not a movement–and he’s right about issues, at least in part. Tim is himself in a political position and making plenty of sounds i recognized as definitively politician-like in spite of his disavowals of the label. Focus on issues seems to be relatively comfortable, and certainly easier than addressing the grand thematics that permeate Occupy to the chagrin of some of its more terrestrially grounded aspirants, as well as its critics. As a result our conversation with Tim was often siderailed into issue-oriented lulls, at least in my mind, though i acknowledge the importance of issues as well. I’m just a grand theme kind of guy.

Tim had a few disturbing things to say about a few issues, like his statement that fracking in eastern El Paso county is “inevitable.” He said a few intriguing things as well. I bet he already regrets toying with the notion of giving OCS a building. He even let slip his own secret fears that the whole economic system might collapse. One thing that immediately raised lots of hackles, oddly enough, was his bemused question about the religious orientation of us Occupiers. And there’s the rub. Or at least one big one.

I promised to eschew incidental reporting for a while, and i am. Really. This may seem like reporting, but it’s otherworldly speculation. I suppose Chet will handle specifics well enough. Tim demonstrated a bit of a dichotomy one comes across in the Occupy phenomenon by stressing issues and suggesting ways for us to work with the System to get things to work out our way. This response to Occupy crops up all the time, both externally and internally. I met with a foreclosure working group in Denver last weekend, and spoke with a “constituent advocate” in Senator Michael Bennett’s office last week. The dichotomy arose there as well. The thing is, lots of people, including lots of Occupiers, are trying to figure out how to work within the System, however it may manifest, to change Things for the better. This is the ground where one finds the crossover between Occupy here in America, and the Tea Party. Again, everyone has a different take, but many express the thing as a desire to return to the Constitution, or to reclaim the “American Dream,” “End the Fed,” get money out of politics, or whatever, within a range of tactical thinking from addressing Congress and local pols, through–well, shooting Congress and local pols.

On the other hand, there’s a big batch of us that see the problems Occupy engages as rather beyond systemic reach and veering into if not fully established as spiritual issues. Although some at our meeting took auto-umbrage at Tim’s query, i think he asked the question in good faith, (ahem), and had worked up a rather bemused state for himself about our expression and motivation. Tim, you see, is a “pragmatist,” he says. He works the old system like a farm pump, and out comes serviceable, if foul-tasting, water. We look like Jesus freaks or something, to him, idealistic apotheoses.

We esoteric Occupiers, as one might call us, don’t see any hope at all from within the System, or at best, very little. (I’m willing to entertain the possible viability of the U.S. constitution, for example, if only because of its inherent malleability). We aren’t especially interested in, for example, the slick approach of establishment solutions to the foreclosure crisis where the government throws grease on the banking cartels’ bone-grinding machinery, setting up programs that allow mortgage holders to continue to be pillaged, a little less uncomfortably. Or policies that allow politicians to bray like drunken mules over the reductions in increase (!) in toxic emissions over the next fifty years when we all know damn well that the rate of extinction of species will have the very cockroaches fighting over table scraps soon enough to make fifty years seem a shaky proposition. Or bullshit excuses about some XX-anianstani or another that’s supposed to be aiming another batch of invisible weaponry at us while cartel honchos hop on a plane for Jerusalem so they can watch the fireworks from there, and record their profit and loss at close quarters.

We don’t like the damn crooked, snaky, backstabbing, cheststabbing, competitive, might-give-you-a break-after-i-get-mine-otherwise-fuck-you-and-yours System, and really we figure that even if it sounds ridiculous to many we’ve come to a point where abolishing the System is the only way to save our now tenuous hold on viable life here on Earth. We don’t see much pragmatism in working within the System in an effort to abolish the System. In fact there’s some concern that the thing may collapse on your head, doing it that way. There’s a real sense of unobtainability in working inside the System, akin to the application of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem i posted earlier. It really seems to us fringe thinkers that the best one can do by working within the System is to expose it’s inherent, indivisible, insuperable bankruptcy.

I’ve been criticized, (by an Atheist that simply couldn’t tolerate discussion of Anything outside his Box), for attaching Undue significance to certain ordinary terms by targeted capitalization. Here in this very post, i’ve capitalized the terms, “System,” and “Things,” in order to attach significance to them that i don’t see as undue. I’m really not so sure what Tim Leigh, or even other Occupiers mean when we bandy those terms about in conversation so very casually. I strongly suspect, though, that their use is far more fluid and troublesome than we notice until we condemn our fellows for misstatements that only derive from failing to recognize one another’s usage. So let me explain that i am not restricting the Terms to ordinary usage involving mere political or financial systems or things, but expect them to be interpreted in a kind of supra-dimensional sense where the mundane is enfolded into a set batch of meaning we can’t really plumb so well.

The point is we need a new System if Things are going to work out for Us. Get it? I’ve often said that i’m part of the 100%. That includes Tim Leigh, whether or not we can trust him. It includes N-eeew-t Grinch-rich. I includes, say, Eric Holder the U.S. AG that has the sheer balls to hire on in his current capacity, straight off the payroll at Covington & Burling where he helped big bankers commit the crime of the millennium. No shit. There’s just no way to trust a guy like that. But we’re all in this boat together, alright, even if some of us are busy drilling holes in the bottom. This System where we steadily compete to see which of us can screw the most of us over simply isn’t working. And i don’t think we can come out any better if we simply rearrange the game board a little so we can screw Holder, instead.

A different Eric, this one a dear friend, says i oughtn’t to hesitate to speak “for Occupy” in the media, and expresses discomfiture when i say i can only speak for myself. But i can’t always speak for everyone. Not all Occupiers agree with the idea that a spiritually oriented reimagining of Human consciousness and interaction–a Paradigm Shift–is central to our focus. But it is, because no political ideology is apt to rescue us from ourselves. We humans have soundly fucked Things up. We have the wherewithal to fix our messes, but only if we completely and utterly rearrange our values. Sometimes we Occupiers still need some rearranging, too, and the business of demolition of our own hoary paradigms and approaches has been uncomfortable already. It’s not so likely to get much easier, either, but here we are at sea together. We’d best all put our drills away.

All these themes are in earlier posts, and i expect they’ll come up again. We esotericists could be wrong about it all. The huge body of science professionals warning of impending and serious environmental dangers could be completely wrong, or even manipulated by power-grabbing globalists, (though that would fall within the scope of this notion of System over system). Being wrong about the imminence of karmic backlash doesn’t negate the ethical reality that we just don’t do each other right. That we’re simply way to caught up with our own rather infantile egos. We really don’t think the numbers are to easily deniable, though, so even though we know this business of attempting to shift the consciousness and motivation of the entire species is absurdly grandiose and improbable, what else can we do? Do or die, it is. And when the whole Thing collapses, hopefully some of us will still be standing. If it does, and we are, Tim, Newt, and Eric are all welcome to stop by for a sandwich, if we still have one. Same goes for those Occupiers alienated by differences of opinion. In the meantime, we mean to fight the Dark aspects of the System tooth and nail, both from within and without.

Top 10 secret armies of the CIA

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Found this on the web, will try to retrace provenance, worth a read: The United States have a well known history of providing military support to countries in need. But from time to time, the US Government has provided secret forces. While many are successful, there have also been a number of failures. This is a list of the ten top secret armies of the CIA.

1. Ukrainian Partisans
From 1945 to 1952 the CIA trained and aerially supplied Ukranian partisan units which had originally been organised by he Germans to fight the Soviets during WWII. For seven years, the partisans, operating in the Carpathian Mountains, made sporadic attacks. Finally in 1952, a massive Soviet military force wiped them out.

2. Chinese Brigade in Burma
After the Communist victory in China, Nationalist Chinese soldiers fled into northern Burma. During the early 1950s, the CIA used these soldiers to create a 12,000 man brigade which made raids into Red China. However, the Nationalist soldiers found it more profitable to monopolise the local opium trade.

3. Guatemalan Rebel Army
After Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz legalised that country’s communist party and expropriated 400,000 acres of United Fruit banana plantations, the CIA decided to overthrow his government. Guatemalan rebels were trained in Honduras and backed up with a CIA air contingent of bombers and fighter planes. This army invaded Guatemala in 1954, promptly toppling Arbenz’s regine.

4. Sumatran Rebels
In an attempt to overthrow Indonesian president Sukarno in 1958, the CIA sent paramilitary experts and radio operators to the island of Sumatra to organise a revolt. With CIA air support, the rebel army attacked but was quickly defeated. The American government denied involvement even after a CIA b-26 was shot down and its CIA pilot, Allen Pope, was captured.

5. Khamba Horsemen
After the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet, the CIA began recruiting Khamba horsemen – fierce warriors who supported Tibet’s religious leader, the Dalai Lama – as they escaped into India in 1959. These Khambas were trained in modern warfare at Camp Hale, high in the rocky mountains near Leadville, Colorado. Transported back to Tibet by the CIA operated Air American, the Khambas organised an army number at its peak some 14,000. By the mid-1960s the Khambas had been abandoned by the CIA but they fought on alone until 1970.

6. Bay of Pigs Invasion Force
In 1960, CIA operatives recruited 1,500 Cuban refugees living in Miami and staged a surprise attack on Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Trained at a base in Guatemala, this small army – complete with an air force consisting of B-26 bombers – landed at the Bay of Pigs on April 19, 1961. The ill-conceived, poorly planned operation ended in disaster, since all but 150 men of the force were either killed or captured within three days.

7. L’armee Clandestine
In 1962, CIA agents recruited Meo tribesmen living in the mountains of Laos to fight as guerrillas against Communist Pathet Lao forces. Called l’armee Clandestine, this unit – paid, trained, and supplied by the CIA – grew into a 30,000 man force. By 1975 the Meos – who had numbers a quarter million in 1962 – had been reduced to 10,000 refugees fleeing into Thailand.

8. Nung Mercenaries
A Chinese hill people living in Vietname, the Nungs were hired and organised by the CIA as a mercenary force, during the Vietnam war. Fearsome and brutal fighters, the Nungs were employed throughout Vietnam and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Nungs proved costly since they refused to fight unless constantly supplied with beer and prostitutes.

9. Peruvian Regiment
Unable to quell guerrilla forces in its eastern Amazonian provinces, Peru called on the US for help in the mid-1960s. The CIA responded by establishing a fortified camp in the area and hiring local Peruvians who were trained by Green Beret personnel on loan from the US army. After crushing the guerrillas, the elite unit was disbanded because of fears it might stage a coup against the government.

10. Congo Mercenary Force
In 1964, during the Congolese Civil War, the CIA established an army in the Congo to back pro-Western leaders Cyril Adoula and Joseph Mobutu. The CIA imported European mercenaries and Cuban pilots – exiles from Cuba – to pilot the CIA air force, composed of transports and B-26 Bombers.

11. The Cambodian Coup
For over 15 years, the CIA had tried various unsuccessful means of deposing Cambodia’s left-leaning Prince Norodom Sihanouk, including assassination attempts. However, in March, 1970, a CIA-backed coup finally did the job. Funded by US tax dollars, armed with US weapons, and trained by American Green Berets, anti-Sihanouk forces called Kampuchea Khmer Krom (KKK) overran the capital of Phnom Penh and took control of the government. With the blessing of the CIA and the Nixon administration, control of Cambodia was placed in the hands of Lon Nol, who would later distinguish himself by dispatching soldiers to butcher tens of thousands of civilians.

12. Kurd Rebels
During the early 1970s the CIA moved into eastern Iraq to organize and supply the Kurds of that area, who were rebelling against the pro-Soviet Iraqi government. The real purpose behind this action was to help the shah of Iran settle a border dispute with Iraq favourably. After an Iranian-Iraq settlement was reached, the CIA withdrew its support from the Kurds, who were then crushed by the Iraqi Army.

13. Angola Mercenary Force
In 1975, after years of bloody fighting and civil unrest in Angola, Portugal resolved to relinquish its hold on the last of its African colonies. The transition was to take place on November 11, with control of the country going to whichever political faction controlled the capital city of Luanda on that date. In the months preceding the change, three groups vied for power: the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). By July 1975, the Marxist MPLA had ousted the moderate FNLA and UNITA from Luanda, so the CIA decided to intervene covertly. Over $30 million was spent on the Angolan operation, the bulk of the money going to buy arms and pay French and South African mercenaries, who aided the FNLA and UNITA in their fight. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, US officials categorically denied any involvement in the Angolan conflict. In the end, it was a fruitless military adventure, for the MPLA assumed power and controls Angola to this day.

14. Afghan Mujaheedin
Covert support for the groups fighting against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began under President Jimmy Carter in 1979, and was stepped up during the administration of Ronald Reagan. The operation succeeded in its initial goal, as the Soviets were forced to begin withdrawing their forces in 1987. Unfortunately, once the Soviets left, the US essentially ignored Afghanistan as it collapsed into a five-year civil war followed by the rise of the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban. The Taliban provided a haven for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

15. Salvadoran Death Squads
As far back as 1964, the CIA helped form ORDEN and ANSESAL, two paramilitary intelligence networks that developed into the Salvadoran death squads. The CIA trained ORDEN leaders in the use of automatic weapons and surveillance techniques, and placed several leaders on the CIA payroll. The CIA also provided detailed intelligence on Salvadoran individuals later murdered by the death squads. During the civil war in El Salvador from 1980 to 1992, the death squads were responsible for 40,000 killings. Even after a public outcry forced President Reagan to denounce the death squads in 1984, CIA support continued.

16. Nicaraguan Contras
On November 23, 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed a top secret National Security Directive authorising the CIA to spend $19 million to recruit and support the Contras, opponents of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. In supporting the Contras, the CIA carried out several acts of sabotage without the Congressional intelligence committees giving consent – or even being informed beforehand. In response, Congress passed the Boland Amendment, prohibiting the CIA from providing aid to the Contras. Attempts to find alternate sources of funds led to the Iran-Contra scandal. It may also have led the CIA and the Contras to become actively involved in drug smuggling. In 1988, the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism, and International Operations concluded that individuals in the Contra movement engaged in drug trafficking; that known drug traffickers provided assistance to the Contras; and that ‘there are some serious questions as to whether or not US officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war effort against Nicaragua’.

17. Haitian Coup
In 1988, the CIA attempted to intervene in Haiti’s elections with a ‘covert action program’ to undermine the campaign of the eventual winner, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Three years later, Aristide was overthrown in a bloody coup that killed more than 4,000 civilians. Many of the leaders of the coup had been on the CIA payroll since the mid-1980s. For example, Emmanuel ‘Toto’ Constant, the head of FRAPH, a brutal gang of thugs known for murder, torture, and beatings, admitted to being a paid agent of the CIA. Similarly, the CIA-created Haitian National Intelligence Service (NIS), supposedly created to combat drugs, functioned during the coup as a ‘political intimidation and assassination squad.’ In 1994, an American force of 20,000 was sent to Haiti to allow Aristide to return. Ironically, even after this, the CIA continued working with FRAPH and the NIS. In 2004, Aristide was overthrown once again, with Aristide claiming that US forces had kidnapped him.

18. Venezuelan Coup Attempt
On April 11, 2002, Venezuelan military leaders attempted to overthrow the country’s democratically-elected left-wing president, Hugo Chavez. The coup collapsed after two days as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets and as units of the military joined with the protestors. The administration of George W. Bush was the only democracy in the Western Hemisphere not to condemn the coup attempt. According to intelligence analyst Wayne Madsen, the CIA had actively organised the coup: ‘The CIA provided Special Operations Group personnel, headed by a lieutenant colonel on loan from the US Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to help organise the coup against Chavez.

Singing a song of angry men

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Citizens of France rise against the will of the absolute monarchDo you hear the people sing, singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again.
When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums,
There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes.

If you search online for Les Miserables lyrics, strangely you find only the first stanza of DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING, repeated three times. The other refrains are in the Finale. Have a read.

Have Gandhi or Mandela or MLK or His Holiness the Dalai Lama, delivered anyone yet from impoverished misery, persecution, or captive servitude to the idle rich? When you want to put your fate into your own hands, maybe it’s going to take guts.

Do you hear the people sing, singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums,
There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?
Then join in the fight that will give you the right to be free!

Do you hear the people sing, singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes!

Will you give all you can give so that our banner may advance?
Some will fall and some will live, will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of the martyrs will water the meadows of France!

Do you hear the people sing, lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light.
Oer the wretched of the Earth there is a flame than never dies.
Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

They will live again in freedom in the garden of the Lord.
They will walk behind the plowshare, they will put away the sword.
The chain will be broken and all men will have their reward.

Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing? Say do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring when tomorrow comes.

Tibetans forced to pass Monarchy to son of old King

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namgyel wangch‘In a massive, whitewashed fort-cum-monastery, King Jigme Khesar Namgyel had the crown, mounted with a raven and adorned with skulls, placed on his head by his retiring father.’ Coronation in the Dragon Kingdom Yes, those Buddhists sure have grand respect for the dignity of human life (an ALL life, it is said by many), do they not? Nothing else quite like using human skulls in your political ceremonies!

OK, I know that with all of the Hollywood style entertainment, and the liberal State Department enlightenment here in our noble USA, most Americans are absolutely totally unaware of the reality that Tibetans already have their own country, Bhutan, and are not merely a ‘nation’ stolen by China. If you go to the link to the news report of the coronation of the new king their, you will briefly be given some small tidbit of information about the Tibetans, and how they have genocidally acted towards the Nepalese in their feudal country. Not a pretty story, and one that runs counter to the doggerel passed on about Tibet as US disinformation and antiChinese propaganda.

We wish all the peoples there in Tibet, China, Nepal, and Bhutan the best, and the best would be if India, Britain, and the US were kept completely out of their region altogether. Certainly that will not happen with the Dalai Lama, Tibetan God King, misinforming the world population about Tibet by way of the international corporate media. However, with a healthy dose of scepticism, one can get more info than that being spoon-fed to the naive and not so innocent.

Top 10 reasons Americans adore Tibet and do not give a shit about Xinjiang

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my handsBoth the 8,000,000 Uighurs and 5,400,000 Tibetans have it rough inside China where the Han tend to want to run the entire show, so why do Americans adore the Tibetans but don’t give a shit about the Uighurs? There are more of these ‘oppressed’ Uighurs than ‘oppressed’ Tibetans, are there not? So what gives with America’s fickle liberal set?

#10- The Uighurs tend to run bad Chinese food restaurants.

#9- Uighurs eat camels; Tibetans don’t.

#8- Tibet is a greater high than Xinjiang is, being higher up.

#7- Americans still remember how the Turks whipped TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and hold the Uighurs personally responsible for that, them being a Turkish people and what all.

#6- Borat is friendly guy. Borat hate Uighur people who responsible all wrong in native country bordering China next Kazakhstan.

#5- Tibetans and Americans love a feudal society whereas Uighurs are a nomadic one.

#4- Americans can pronounce Tibet, but cannot say Xinjiang without making the Chinese laugh.

#3- Americans can say Tibetan but cannot pronounce Uighur.

#2- Some few Americans can find Tibet on a map, but none can find Xinjiang.

#1- Tibetans serve a ‘Living God’ while Uighurs only have Mohammad, who we all know is quite dead in Christian eyes.

The Dalai Lama in Seattle

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George Bush confers with the Dalai LamaThe Dalai Lama has just descended from the heavens into a football stadium in Seattle where he gave a seemingly peaceful and non-violent message. His demands for Tibetan autonomy are reasonable enough on the surface, and he has also spoken out against a boycott of the Chinese Olympic games, unlike Harry Potter (authoress Rollings), who has just this weekend called for the assemblage of an army of wizards from his (her) home in England, to attack the Chinese devils with mass condemnation and mass magical incantations. The Dalai Lama in Seattle prefers the spiritual approach though.

The problem is, what exactly is the Dalai Lama doing by coming to venues like middle class America’s Seattle? What is it he hopes to find there, instead of say in Lagos, Nigeria, Dhaka, Bangladesh, or Cairo or Bogota? In short, what’s he doing in Rome? Trying to get the ear of the World’s Emperor perhaps? And of course, we know that The Emperor commands legions of troops. Wonder if any of that has effected the spiritual style of the Dalai?

We also want the Tibetans to have autonomy but are not pushing for the independence of Tibet from China, and that is the exact same position the Dalai Lama is currently taking. So then we would agree nominally with the Dalai Lama about this. But let us also think about Tibet a little in more detail then.

In fact, the Tibetans already do have an independent state in the Himalayas, and it is called Bhutan. There, the Tibetan Buddhists have been about as cruel to the non Tibetan community as they think the Chinese are to them in China. Out of a population of less than 1,000,000 the dominant Tibetan Buddhist Bhutanese government managed to expel, in the last decade or so, about 100,000 Nepalese residents from Bhutan. Oh, where, oh what, is the Dalai Lama’s position on those events?

One of the complaints of the Chinese based Tibetans is their lack of linguistic autonomy compared to the Chinese of China themselves. There is a problem for the Chinese government though. Out of the 51 Tibetan language dialects for a population of some several millions, how many should the Chinese make efforts to keep these languages on an equal status with Chinese, say? It would be interesting to know how many of the American fans of the Dalai Lama speak any of these Tibetan dialects/ languages?

This drama will continue. Americans are not really adept in participating in the Chinese propaganda machine, and the Chinese are not adept in representing themselves well in the Anglo corporate media disinformation machine either. Of course, the Chinese are not demanding that the US government respect the autonomy of the Black American community or the various Native American communities. Imagine if the Black Community had ‘autonomy’ over the US prison industrial complex? The Chinese should demand autononmy for America’s racial and national minorities. And they should economically boycott the US until the US government accedes to their just demands.

Is the Dalai Lama an intelligence asset?

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We know, or should by now, that the U.S.’s own terrorist organization, the CIA, is behind all foreign relation actions and assassinations, mostly of the covert kind. They cover themselves by using NGO’s, front companies, black banks, and contracting services with private intelligence and mercenary companies. Kay Griggs also claims the mob is still linked closely to CIA. She should know. But why would the Dalai Lama be on the CIA’s payroll? Because Tibet plays into the larger plan of the CIA & Pentagon’s long-standing practice of spreading “democracy.” For whatever nefarious capitalist reasons.

But China has used capitalism to strengthen it’s Stalinist tyrant “communist” bureaucracy with huge influx of dollars and also allowing U.S. investment bankers to make billions. Maybe the party is over since the US economy is in the dumper? Or the Pentagon is concerned about Chinas influence in West and North Africa? The media attention is telling. Whatever Chinas human rights abuses, the Bush administrations Iraq civilian deaths and civilian deaths from Clinton’s Iraq sanctions are far more criminal (genocide anyone?) than the totality of China’s. China and Russia are also challenging U.S. NATO expansions and making overtures to India to see the U.S. for what it is… a world bully and war criminal, looking to steal resources and geography in any way it can.

From Global Research:

“What has the Dalai Lama actually achieved for Tibetans inside Tibet? If his goal has been independence for Tibet or, more recently, greater autonomy, then he has been a miserable failure. He has kept Tibet on the front pages around the world, but to what end? The main achievement seems to have been to become a celebrity. Possibly, had he stayed quiet, fewer Tibetans might have been tortured, killed and generally suppressed by China.”

From Global Research:

“Indeed, with the CIA’s deep involvement with the Free Tibet Movement and its funding of the suspiciously well-informed Radio Free Asia, it would seem somewhat unlikely that any revolt could have been planned or occurred without the prior knowledge, and even perhaps the agreement, of the National Clandestine Service (formerly known as the Directorate of Operations) at CIA headquarters in Langley.”

From WSWS:

“The campaign against the Beijing summer games, predictably,
has become a political football, used for generally reactionary
purposes. The long-standing links between Tibetan nationalist
forces and the Central Intelligence Agency, which financed, armed
and helped instigate the 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, are
common knowledge. In the more recent period, CIA conduits like
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), set up by the Reagan
administration in 1984, have provided funds to Tibetan separatist
movements”

Tibetans riot in China

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Tibetans inhabit the poorest province of China, and the average income is only about $400 per year. The Tibetans are an oppressed minority in a capitalist China run by a single party, the very much corrupted Chinese Communist Party, and they occupy a terrain that is a gigantic part of China yet that is very sparsely populated. That makes them a perfect target for US and European manipulation, in the West’s war to marginalize China away from their own control of world power.

Many Western intellectual types are fond of Buddhism, which they see as a peaceful and nonviolent alternative to the dominant religion of their own countries, which is Christianity. They associate Tibet with Buddhism. They love the Dalai Lama, the leader of the Tibetan aristocracy in exile, who is also considered a spiritual Buddhist leader. These Western intellectuals think that all that is Tibetan relates somehow to their beliefs that non-violence is the only method to bring about change in the world, or to achieve inner peace.
However, the rioters in Tibet do not support much anything at all to do with that philosophy. These Buddhist monks and their supporters attacked stores, and burned cars in the streets. They rioted.

see… Dozens killed in Tibetan protests

This event had more in common with the LA riots than with any peaceful, supposedly non-violent religion. This was the action of not only an outraged ethnic grouping, but also a relgious grouping that thinks it is getting a raw deal from the dominant ethnic group. They probably are, but the Western governments are no more concerned about Tibetan welfare than they are about Albanian welfare.

Still, the US and European government see Tibet as a grand opportunity to manipulate Western opinion against Chinese nationalism, in favor of their own nationalisms. That is simply a fact.

See video of riots…. Cars burn in Tibet riots Hardly just ‘non-violence’ in action.

Peaceful vacation in New Mexico, Anybody?

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Half a million can buy some PEACE for you in Albuquerque next week. You get Rigoberta Menchu, the Dalai Lama, and some Gandhi, too…. all for just $65/person, price of hotel room and organic vegetarian nourishment not included. I feel like flying there in a hot air balloon! New Mexico Peace Conference

I have a pacifism problem

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Mahatma Gandhi Ghandi GandiIf a pacifist falls in the forest, does he save anybody? I do not mean in the metaphysical sense.
 
If a hundred thousand pacifists fall, out of sight from anyone to witnesses their deaths, struck down every last one by anti-pacifists, do they increase pacifism or simply deliver their own extinction? What if it’s a half a million in East Timor? Or several million in a Turkish desert? If there are no witnesses to report it, no writers to remember it, no masses to empathize, there is no outrage, no call to common humanity.

Gandhi had the accruing outrage of the British people built on a century of brutal massacres of unarmed Indians. He also benefited from an honorable free press. Both ensured that Gandhi’s non-violent actions could spark an outcry and tip the scales of social justice. The Native Americans had no such good fortune, quietly annihilated far from civilization’s eyes. The Palestinians are not faring any better, interned by the Jews, suffering the steady attrition designed into concentration camps and Indian reservations.

My problem with pacifists such as the Dalai Lama is that their goals lay in another world, the next. Their escape for the Dark Ages would have been to proceed further into darkness. The answer to getting Tibet back from the Chinese lies not in relinquishing it. Pacifism may soothe the soul and calm our anger only that it allows us a serene death. Pacifism resolves the conflicted feelings we have about losing a homestead. It will not win it back.

As the barbarians breach the gates, religious leaders always call for non-violent acquiescence. The purpose may be to die with dignity, or else it’s the hopeful belief that “they can’t kill us all.” But history has shown, from prehistory to the present, they most certainly can. Look up barbarian in the dictionary. Their savagery extends beyond the scope of human beings to imagine it. Had that feeling lately about today’s unspeakable acts? Is it beyond your comprehension that elements of mankind might be immovably barbaric?

Perhaps you are of the mind that if barbarous cockroach man dominates the earth, it will be a world in which you no longer choose to live. But be square in such case about your call to pacifism. Others may not share your abdication of responsibility to this life.

Saboteurs in the peace camp

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How many ways can you sabotage an activist effort? Until the government’s playbook is published, let’s use our imagination to ferret out saboteurs.

Infiltrators: paid undercover law-enforcement agents who report back about planned actions. They might also be instigators of actions contrary or more extreme to what the genuine participants intend. Infiltration of political assemblies has been considered unlawful, until now when everything considered unlawful, for this executive branch, has become lawful.

Obstructionists: usually volunteers, they may not even know that they are serving someone else’s purpose. Difficult, mentally addled, or mentally deficient persons are courted by political party handlers or law enforcement and innocuously encouraged to join grass-roots groups. Their purpose is to hinder concensus-building at meetings and slow the strategizing. They do this by being slow-witted or contrarian. As a result, activists come to feel disorganized and ineffectual. Genuine members become discouraged. Prospective participants are driven off by the seeming futility.

Talk of saboteurs being planted is completely paranoid thinking of course. But if I was Machiavelli, on the other side, it’s certainly what I’d do.

Obstructionists are entirely the fault of an organization’s self-sabotage. Usually it’s the result of the tender quality of activists wanting to include all others, regardless of capability or handicap. It’s our primary vulnerablity to being waylaid. But it is not only altruism. In many cases it is simply bad management.

Regardless of how the unproductive or counterproductive participants reach the door, it falls on the organizers to limit their reach. Don’t assign tasks beyond a volunteer’s talents. Don’t send someone to negotiate, for example, who is likely to be flumoxed and bamboozled. We sent an envoy to ask something of the city, alerted the press to monitor the response, only to learn our representative was appeased and stalled. Nothing gained, and no story.

As another example, be very careful about giving responsibility when it is unearned. Offering faith in someone’s potential is generous, but how much of your agenda can be risked for such a big, if maybe also lazy, gesture?

The world peace and justice movement recently coordinated an international, post 9/11, multi-day event. In Denver it included an appearance by the Dalai Lama and nine other Nobel lauriates. SEASON OF FORGIVENESS was an eleven day period beginning on September 11th, to reflect on forgiveness, perhaps the real key to peace. Season of Forgiveness was a wonderful antidote I thought to the knee-jerk nationalistic “never forgetting” of 9/11.

In our circle we had a staffer declare that eleven days does not a season make. Really? What about the holiday season? Or hunting season? Nope, it was “stupid.” As a result in our town, in rejection of the national and international buzz generated for the event, in rejection of the possible co-promotion, Colorado Spring’s eleven days were called “11 Days to Empower Peace.” The turnout was despairing. Small wonder.

Tookie and the myth of non-violent protest

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A police beatingTonight the state of California is scheduled to execute Stanley Tookie Williams, co founder of the Crypts, after Governor Schwarzenegger made the determination that Williams was not sufficiently redeemed to merit clemency.
 
All sorts of state and local organizations were abuzz about the possibility of riots should Williams be executed. The consensus was to urge every riot minded person to remember that the reformed Williams stood for non-violence.

Now isn’t that just like an authoritarian state to honor Stanley Williams with non-violence in word, while perpetrating institutional violence in deed against his defenseless body?

I’m not sure what could be accomplished by public violence in this case, but the threat of violence from the masses has always played a significant role in holding off the authoritarian ambitions of greedy bastards.

These days of protest against the war have raised profound anti-violence issues, extending from transcending human nature to the more applied martyrdom for the purpose of igniting support. But the immediate result and absolute result seems to be that the bullies get to keep all the marbles.

We are told to respect Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and now Tookie Williams for their seasoned non-violent teachings.

No one is prepared to point to Castro, Mao or Chavez as examples of rebels who resorted to violence and who brought their people to greater prosperity as a result.

I saw a documentary about Tibet recently, in which the Dalai Lama was praised for leading his people in non-violent opposition to the Chinese occupation of Tibet.

The Dalai Lama can be respected for governing his people in exile, for maintaining in them a sense of hope that their kingdom will be regained. That sense of hope is perhaps the most important motivation they have for keeping their language and cultural heritage alive. The other alternative is to face that they will be a displaced people forever. Each then might better embrace assimilation into their host cultures and prosper.

The reality is that even should Tibet be regained, the westernized and worldly Tibetans would probably not return to their feudal heritage. And the other reality is that Tibet will never be regained.

Holding firm to a policy of non-violence has certainly saved lives, but it has lost principles. The real wisdom of the Dalai Lama might have been the assessment that the Chinese forces would have proven insurmountable and that too many more Tibetans would have perished with the kingdom lost none the less.

Will non-violence prevail over the Chinese occupation? There is no precedence to offer that hope.

We like to credit Gandhi for having proven the efficacy of non-violence, but that is sorely inaccurate. Gandhi sat on the back of the dying elephant of British colonialism, until it collapsed. And it may have collapsed by his sitting on it, but it had been weakened and battered by a century of violent rebellions. British colonial rule in India ended because the elephant had been driven to its knees by many countless uprisings and massacres which the British public could no longer countenance. It took over one hundred years of struggle against oppressive rule to drive the British out, and Gandhi was fortunate enough to deal the death blow by sitting down.

Nelson Mandela too is credited with leading a non-violent takeover of South Africa. Anyone who has read Mandela’s auto-biography knows that this is a misrepresentation. Mandela’s struggle began with violence and then he was incarcerated. Involuntary non-violence.

Martin Luther King provides an example of non-violent martyrdom affecting the conscience of a democratic population. King would be the best model for non-violent protest were we to inhabit a similar circumstance. It is doubtful today that our media possesses a conscience to report about oppression and inhumanity. Likewise it is doubtful that we have retained any meaningful democracy. It remains our horror to discover that public opinion or outrage will affect our governance not one bit.

Isn’t it just like a bully to admonish the rest of the schoolyard to uphold principles of pacifism? The only thing that will bring down a bully is a collective agreement to take him down. Pacifism works against the bully because he knows that if he makes a martyr of somebody, the others will rise up like a mob. Behind non-violent protest lies a looming urgency of violence.