Doesn't this contradiction seem a bit odd? Re: China-Tibet- Olympic Boycott- US Protests

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Many U.S. progressives and liberals are supporting the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan opposition to the People’s Republic of China. So are George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, the CIA, and every untrustworthy mainstream media outlet.

How could progressive people be on the same side as Bush, the CIA and the ultra-right?

Seems odd is all.

The demonization of China is in full swing now. Demonization is the preferred tool to delegitimize targets and prepare the ground for a destabilization campaign and who knows what else.

The demonization tactic has been consistently applied preceding regime changes, coups and invasions: the invasion of Panama in 1989; Iraq in 1991 and 2003; Haiti in the first half of 1990s; the aerial destruction of Yugoslavia in 1999; the military coup in Venezuela in 2002; and the new threats against Iran. The pattern is crystal clear. Why do people not see this?

Be aware of the manipulations occuring courtesy of forces within the US that do not have the Tibetan People's interests in mind.

Has anyone here been to Tibet?

[MADem]

1. We're not invading China, or "regime changing" them, either.

We're poking them in the eye, and using Tibet as our sharp stick, is all.

They have a lot of our debt, and we're telling them that, nonetheless, "You're not the boss-a ME!!!"

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Opposing teh Chinese government doesn't have to mean being on the same side as Bush

Don't tell me you believe "you're either with us or against us"?

[Orwellian_Ghost]

5. That's not what was being said

sometimes I'm amazed at what people interpret.

What is being said is quite simple. People should ask themselves a few questions here and stop being reactionary. There is a reason that we have "Save Tibet", "Save Darfur" in our faces every day and do not have "Save Iraq", "Save Somalia", Save The Congo", areas where the atrocities dwarf anything happening in Tibet by exponential numbers.

So we must ask why has there been no attention to The Congo and why so much on Tibet e.g.? This isn't serendipitous occurrence it is by design.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. The method of interpretation was fairly straightforward

you said "Many U.S. progressives and liberals are supporting the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan opposition to the People’s Republic of China. So are George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, the CIA, and every untrustworthy mainstream media outlet.

How could progressive people be on the same side as Bush, the CIA and the ultra-right? "

I hardly had to 'interpret' that at all. I basically repeated what you said. And the answer to your question in this post is fairly simple: because China is hosting the Olympics this year, and is making a big PR effort to paint itself as an accepted and respected country because of it. So the protests are pointing out it's not.

Iraq is, of course, on the news every day. Probably because the controlling power there is the USA. Somalia and the Congo, and Darfur, aren't on every day - but the controlling powers there aren't large countries trying to claim they respect human rights.

[Richard Steele]

12. Exactly so, and very well put. nm

[Orwellian_Ghost]

20. Not exactly

the interpretation was completely off.

In any case here's what the Dalai lama says about Iraq:

"Terrorism is the worst kind of violence, so we have to check it, we have to take countermeasures."

Soothing words to the Bush war makers as they seek $87 billion for countermeasures to bolster earlier countermeasures that failed. No amount of Buddhist incense smoked over the lama's words can hide their meaning: Kill people to solve conflicts. Here is one more religious leader who is a pacifist between wars, akin to being a vegetarian between meals.

On Iraq, His Holiness was equally light in the head. It's "too early to say" whether the Bush war against Iraq was mistaken: "I feel only history will tell." For 12 years under three presidents, the go-it-alone United States has made war on an impoverished people--first through the 1991 bombing of the country's infrastructure, then a decade of lethal economic sanctions, then the March 2003 invasion meant to kill a dictator that Donald Rumsfeld twice sucked up to in the 1980s when Iraq was a weapons client, and now we are an occupying force largely resented by the populace.

When will it not be "too early" to make a judgment about all that? What will it take for the Dalai Lama to join much of the rest of the world and see through the jingoism of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and condemn, in forceful language, the violence?

...

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-110220571.html">LINK

The Dalai Lama also called the illegal and criminal act of the US bombing in Afghanistan "a more mature approach to war" as reported by the BBC.

He also spoke of the bombings in Kosovo in rather mealy-mouthed terms that seemed rather appalling for a spiritual leader who speaks for non-violence.

Strange don't you think?

[Richard Steele]

22. I said "EXACTLY", and I stand by it. Your post is "thin beer" at best ...

...and I do not regard it as "best".

Not even MEDIOCRE.

[Rosemary2205]

19. sometimes I'm amazed at what people interpret

I'm convinced it's weed. :)

I'm betting the west wants Tibet because of water. China needs it and much of China's water originates in Tibet, yes? A free Tibet is an exploitable Tibet.

[Kaleko]

3. You can't get into Tibet. Guess why? But I've been to Dharamsala and met many Tibetan refugees

The atrocities have been going on for 50 years. You don't have to demonize the Chinese to decry the CCP's policies. Same with BOOOsh and his minions. Psychopathic thugs in high-ranking positions do not represent the will of the people.

[theoldman]

7. The atrocities have been going on for over 100 years, maybe

more. Don't forget that the British killed thousands of Tibetans in the early 1900's.

[On the Road]

24. You Csn't Get Into Tibet?

You can now. Trying googling "Tibet travel" -- you'll get hundreds of hits like this one:

http://www.toursoftibet.com/

[Kaleko]

25. Not as a journalist or a known activist.

[Joanne98]

4. FREE TIBET!!!!!!!!!!

[zbdent]

11. I'll take two!

[stimbox]

16. The Chinese did free Tibet in 1959.

Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

18. Interesting and even-handed article - thanks for posting it

The author describes the brutal feudalism in Tibet over the centuries, not the Shangri-la we might think it to have been. He doesn't exactly seemed thrilled however with Chinese occupation of Tibet:

".....In the 1990s, the Han, the ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China’s immense population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Han colonization are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing. Chinese cadres in Tibet too often view their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic development and “patriotic education.” During the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were once again launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in “political subversion.” Some were held in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment. ....."

(...)

".....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. Tibetans deserve to be perceived as actual people, not perfected spiritualists or innocent political symbols. “To idealize them,” notes Ma Jian, a dissident Chinese traveler to Tibet (now living in Britain), “is to deny them their humanity.” ....."

(...)

".....Finally, let it be said that if Tibet’s future is to be positioned somewhere within China’s emerging free-market paradise, then this does not bode well for the Tibetans. China boasts a dazzling 8 percent economic growth rate and is emerging as one of the world’s greatest industrial powers. But with economic growth has come an ever deepening gulf between rich and poor. Most Chinese live close to the poverty level or well under it, while a small group of newly brooded capitalists profit hugely in collusion with shady officials. Regional bureaucrats milk the country dry, extorting graft from the populace and looting local treasuries. Land grabbing in cities and countryside by avaricious developers and corrupt officials at the expense of the populace are almost everyday occurrences. Tens of thousands of grassroot protests and disturbances have erupted across the country, usually to be met with unforgiving police force. Corruption is so prevalent, reaching into so many places, that even the normally complacent national leadership was forced to take notice and began moving against it in late 2006. ....."

[Bright Eyes]

6. How exactly does criticizing the actions of the Chinese government

equal siding with Bush? Quite a bit stretching there.

"Many U.S. progressives and liberals are supporting the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan opposition to the People’s Republic of China."

How exactly is that a bad thing?

[Orwellian_Ghost]

8. Compartmentalization

If a principle is just and worth supporting, then it should be supported equally without making 'exceptions' based on special circumstances or interests.

Free Somalia!

[Bright Eyes]

9. Who's making an exception?

I'm just as critical of America's human rights record, as am about China or any other country. Just because America has and is committing atrocities doesn't excuse other countries doing the same.

[zbdent]

13. Bush can't boycott the China Olympics ... they'll foreclose on our debt and

we'll never get another thing manufactured cheaply again in this lifetime! U.S. businesses would have to pay U.S. Citizens decent wages to do stuff!

[TheWraith]

15. They can't foreclose on our debt. It's literally impossible. nt

[zbdent]

21. okay, so "foreclose" may not be the right word ...

but what happens when China demands we pay them what we owe them?

[TheWraith]

14. You're mistaken.

The point is that Bush and company are NOT going against the Chinese--that's why we're not boycotting the Olympics, not even the opening ceremonies, and why they're sucking up as hard as they can.

The flying-monkey-right may whine and talk about the "Chi-coms," but that's no different then them blaming all the world's problems on the A-rabs, or the welfare queens, or whatever else. They're not talking about what we're talking about, and they're not on the side we are.

Regardless of tinfoilery, we're not invading China.

[girl gone mad]

17. Bush is boycotting the Olympics?

since when?

[On the Road]

23. The Point of Your Post, it Would Seem, is the Demonization

that's going on. And almost no one on the thread seems to have comprehended that.

I want to understand what's going on in Tibet, but the current reporting leaves the situation absolutely unexplained. And that's usually a sign of some inconvenient facts that would spoil the narrative.

I doubt the riots are over independence. I would suspect it's an economic thing connected with the influx of Han and growing economic diversity -- maybe oil and food prices as well. The Chinese are very authoritarian and do not have a tradition of respecting individual rights, but it's difficult to tell how much of the violence was police overkill and how much was the rioters themselves.

[booley]

26. So if Shrub is against eating babies

And I am against eating babies.

Then by your logic, eating babies is good?!

Uhh, no. In fact it would be inconsistant of me not to oppose both Shrub and the Chiense gov.

IF one occupation is wrong, so is another.