Reply #35: To further the discussion [View All]

[MADem]

Re: the Chinese--it's in their interest to turn Tibet into Disney World; if DL's little town in India can make money hand over fist, imagine what a well-produced Shangri-La could rake in. They aren't evergoing to give the DL autonomy, likely due to his cozying up to the CIA all those years. Surely they want at least as much control over him and his followers as they do the Roman Catholic Church in China.

I found where someone had archived that originally referenced CT article; it is well worth reading: http://www.timbomb.net/buddha/archive/msg00087.html

"The idea was to make Tibet very expensive for China," said the former agent,
who now lives in the eastern U.S. "The Chinese had these long, vulnerable supply
lines. The guerrillas were supposed to harass them, tie up troops, generally
make life miserable. And for a while, they actually succeeded."
Yet from the very beginning, the agent said, planners at CIA headquarters
in Langley, Va., had few illusions about pushing well-equipped Chinese
divisions out of the kingdom. "Did we tell the Tibetans that? Of course
not," he said. "But if we used the Tibetans for our own ends, then they
also used the Cold War to get support for sovereignty. I feel no guilt
whatsoever over the operation, especially given what the Chinese have done
in Tibet since." ...

Despite growing protests from both Nepal and China, hundreds of warriors
held out with Indian and Taiwanese support until 1974, two years after
President Richard Nixon normalized U.S. relations with China. The death
knell, when it finally came, arrived via audiotape. "His Holiness urged
them to put down their weapons," Lobsang said of a recording of the Dalai
Lama that was hand-carried from camp to camp in the dusty, lunar mountains
of northwestern Nepal. "Most of them gave up and were relocated to small
farms. A few committed suicide. Some tried to escape to India and were
ambushed by the Chinese and the Nepalis, who were embarrassed by the
operation." The final shots of the secret war, fired by Nepalese Ghurka
soldiers, killed the last U.S.-trained guerrilla leader at a remote
18,000-foot pass near the Indian border.

The CIA quietly paid to resettle the survivors. The Tibetans have eschewed
organized violence ever since. "Now all we do is wait, and the Chinese will
beat us at this too," said Lobsang, who noted that his grown daughter,
raised in Nepal, visited Tibet for the first time last year and felt "like
an alien." Other aging veterans voice similar laments--less that their
past struggle, however brave, has sunk into oblivion, but that their future
is heading for the same fate. Nawang refuses to revisit his homeland
despite repeated Chinese offers of fence-mending. The capital he defended
on horseback 37 years ago now boasts more than 300 Chinese discos. "They
require us to register as `overseas Chinese,' to get in," said Nawang. He
said he is a Tibetan and will never be a Chinese. He said that he will
probably die in Katmandu.

I still wonder if the DL is a victim of Iraq War austerity measures--could his hundred million plus budget, paid for by the US of A to keep him living well and in comfort, be getting cut? Or is the whole 'Tibet thing' being used as a card on the table with the Chinese for some purpose?

We're able to look the other way on matters of freedom and democracy when it is in our national interest to so do, could this be another one of those instances?