* is not a student of history (she studied biology in Belgium and went th China to specialise in TCM). So why should I be subjected to her ill-informed views on Tibetan history?
* did not even travel into Tibet (by which I mean TAR): she only went as far as XiaHe in Gansu province (which, although it’s a Tibetan area, isn’t representative of what’s happening inside Tibet, where travel is much more restrictive). (By the way the name of the monastery in XiaHe is Labrang, not Labulang: so much for nomenclatural accuracy)
* Was not in Lhasa (or anywhere else in TAR) on March 14 when the riots occurred. So what she’s passing off is only second-hand perspective. (To be fair, I acknowledge that most eyewitnesses account note that the riots on March 14 in Lhasa were targeted at Han Chinese and Hui (Muslim) communities by Tibetans, and it’s probably true. But my point is: why should any weightage by given to Elisabeth Martens’ account of what happened when she was not an eyewitness to the events?)

Did Ms Martens speak to the monks in “Labulang” (her description, not mine) about the “patriotic education” campaigns that they are subjected to? Does she even know what this entails?

I could go on and on to give a point-by-point rebuttal, but I don’t have the time. But to reiterate, I find it unbelievable that such ill-informed views could be freely passed around as though Ms Martens was some historical scholar who has spent years and years in Tibet!

Sickening!

Was she paid by China to be at the show tonight (bad joke hum…)
Listening her, we could seriously believe that…
So stupid little bourgeoise…
So…
No words to discriebe my indignation in front of lie and distortion…
Consternation…

So just like an old Chinese wisdom put it “things are segregated into categories, and people are divided into groups”. You got the idea. And there is a good ‘western’ one: “put your feet in other people’s shoes”.

And there is one very simple explanation for restrictions on ‘western’ media in China, because WE DON’T TRUST YOU!

I strongly urge any conscientious ‘westerners’ to check this out: http://www.anti-cnn.com

Nation states are problematic as they annex their Hawaiis, Puerto Ricos, Texases, Alaskas, and the whole US western “frontier”. Texas was once oil rich, now it and Lousiana are gateways for petro. Alaska is oil rich. Not to mention the Russian and Soviet empires, history is replete with the comes and goings of city states and nation states.

So what is Tibet? Its a piece of land that neither the Tibetians nor the Chinese created.

Personally, Dali Lama and his Rev. Moon-like persona aside, I think breakaways should be much more common. As an economy becomes self-reliant it is only natural that pieces break away and form entities as it happens in nature. There would be no tree, dog, human, ape, amoeba if this all were not part of a great complex of secession of micro cells.

But we here in the US have one hellva lot of nerve to be calling anyone a colonial empire!

This may be the case with Tibet, which possesses valuable minerals and other natural resources, a good deal of territory, a strategic military position, and a border with India. I doubt that many know the true balance sheet between China and Tibet. Is China making a profit yet, or is it investing more than it gets in return?

If China is already making a profit, then Tibet can be viewed as a typical colony. If China is not yet making a profit from Tibet, though, this does not mean that Tibet is not a colony. China may want Tibet for future gains and be investing in the infrastructure with the goal of assuring its domination by importing so many Han Chinese, the Tibetans will be unable to resist any longer. The Dalai Lama and many Tibet scholars believe that this is the true state of affairs in Tibet.

As far as I know, the USSR actually lost money in Poland but it kept this satellite buffer state for strategic purposes and with the hope that it would become a more profitable relationship one day. The Baltic states were also money losers, as far as I know, but their status was different as the USSR had completely incorporated them into the central system as mere “republics” of the USSR.

Mr. Wilkinson,
I understand how the Belgians exploited the great natural wealth of the Congo during their brutal colonization; and how the British maintained their worthless lives off the exploited wealth of its various colonies around the world: but what exactly did the Soviet Union take from its colonies, oft called ’satellites’, like Latvia or Poland? And, in the same vein, what has China taken in the way of imperialist booty from Tibet?

Again discussion in left circles without knowledge of the most basic facts, another one of my pet peeves. Yugoslavia was never part of the Soviet block, please read some history before making such outlandish assertions. We could travel anywhere we could please, could buy western goods, our military was its own (and prepared for soviet aggression), our borders with Soviet countries were tense. People took refuge in our embassy in Budapest during the Hungarian uprising, and likewise during the Czechoslovak revolution in 1968. This is outrageous how I’m constantly reading in these pages that black is white and white is black, from people who don’t know which end is up, all told so authoritatively.

The other nations were either part of the Soviet block, or had tight relations with USSR (Mongolia). Czech was not a country, Czechoslovakia was. They were not part of the country of the Soviet Union per se as implied by this quote, but were separate countries dictated to by the USSR.

This pretty much shows what I mean above. So, self determination and liberation from long term oppression and enslavement of a minority, somehow enslaves the colonizers and makes them (horrors, horrors) miserable!!!

And you want to be taken seriously in elections….

hp: Yugoslavia was NEVER part of the Warsaw pact. Yes, it was a socialist country. There was a falling out in 1948 (the year that the Warsaw pact was founded) with Stalin who had tried to dictate to Tito. Since then, Yugoslavia was a founder and an active member of the non-aligned movement and never followed the Soviet-style communism. Take it from one who was born and lived there.

But it’s good you mention this, because this is similar to Kosovo — I mean the “progressives” take on this. As long as you’re in opposition to the US policy, then oppression of a people and excusing inducing inhumanity in the masters is OK.

And then add the other “captured nations” of the Soviet Union–Czech, Yugoslavia, Poland, East Germany, and Mongolia.

For those of us old enough to remember, the Baltic states, Poland, East Germany, and Czech, in particular, had a long struggle to be free of their Soviet overlords, but they succeeded and through little or no violence. This should be a lesson to “Chinese patriots” who mistake the subjugation of Tibet with “Chinese strength” or “pride in the motherland,” especially given the very generous alternative the Dalai Lama has offered China.

It is no accident, by the way, that Germany and Eastern Europe have been quick to understand Tibet’s predicament and thus support a boycott of the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. Nothing like having lived through it…

Another fine example is Mongolia. There are two “Mongolias,” in a way. One is so-called “inner-Mongolia,” a state entirely controlled by China in a manner similar to Tibet. Inner Mongolia hardly contains Mongolians any longer (just 17% of the population now); its religion, culture, and language have been all but destroyed, or “assimilated,” into the Chinese “motherland” (what a mother!).

In contrast, the independent state of Mongolia which lies north of and outside of China, is now an OK democracy with freedom of speech, religion, association, and so on. The country is still poor, but it belongs to the people who have always lived there and they are free to control themselves as they see fit and are able.

For readers more familiar with the USSR than the PRC, Mongolia is also an instructive example for comparisons between these two. Most of us know that the USSR could be very ruthless, deporting, killing, and imprisoning many thousands. But even their rough treatment did not seek to utterly destroy the cultures of the regions they controlled. The Mongolia to the north of China, which was controlled by the USSR, is an excellent example of this contrast. Compare to “inner Mongolia,” controlled by the PRC and which basically is no longer “Mongolian” in any real sense of the world.

By the way, there is an “inner Mongolian” independence movement seeking relief from the PRC, but how many have ever heard of it? By the time your population is a mere 17% of the total, there is little hope left. So now you can understand the real reason for the railway into Tibet and the massive influx of Han Chinese into Tibet.

It’s interesting, the growing desperation with which those of us who’ve been genetically programmed to see feudalism as the ‘natural scheme of things’, whose ‘authoritarian personalities’ (i.e., whose characters dependent on orders from the corporate hierarchy to know what is real and what exactly to do next—not just the Prof Irwin Coreys [The World's Leading Authority] among us who like to blow a lot of smoke about their ‘expertise’ on n’importe quoi.), those of us who possess just enough privilege to find time out from reproductive drudgery to contemplate our abject fates (’Conceived in sin, born in pain, to a life of toil, and certain death.’), but are not privileged enough to get out of our moral dilemmas without the involuntary servitude of others: it’s interesting how all of us ‘dead men (and women) walking’ cling to irrational notions of our own uniqueness, the incomparable importance of our own special being—our ‘Spirituality’. And to reinforce this infantile narcissism, we have been given the Dalai Lama and Tibetan monks as a kind of passive-aggressive Hole-in-the-Wall gang.

It’s this febrile obsession with keeping the ‘god-phone’ bill paid, so’s not to miss out on the last minute reprieve (like the discovery of a vaccine against death), that has made religion such an effective justification for violent, unto lethal, human exploitation, as well as a wildly popular business front and tax dodge (e.g., almost the entirety of US social services have been privatized, sold-off to ‘faith-based’ [i.e., tax-exempt] organizations).

And when it comes to Tibet or EEurope or the Balkans or Africa or any of the rest of the Third World, when we talk of ‘Human Rights’ or ‘Freedom of Expression’, it is quite clear that, after the ‘Fall of Atheistic Communism’, what we are talking about are certain prioritized rights and freedoms: the right for everyone (at least, all those who have the disposable time and energy to have an interest in such things) to hold any opinion (no matter how lame or unfounded in reality) and to practice whatever ‘harmless’ superstitions she or he chooses trumps all political and social (and economic) rights, collective rights, to health care, education, mass communication, full employment, and, generally, to the pursuit of a decent life free from catastrophic violence.

That the right to self-determination of a minority (however oppressed or repressed or suppressed) is acceptable at the cost of the enslavement and immiseration of the vast majority is the kind of occulted and toxic (il)logic that only exists inside the most delusional of sects (like the Moonies, or Scientologiest, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the Democratic and Republican parties)—and certain locked wards for the criminally insane. Physical and intellectual terrorism on the part of the ruling elite in the US has absolutely laid its poor benighted and drug-addled people to waste—their only response to current profound economic depression is to plead for more Prozac from the Fed.

We on the Left seem to use ‘Spirituality’ the way drunkards us lamp posts: more for support than for illumination. Adorno described this delusion that has recently justified so much murder and mayhem quite succinctly in his Treatise Against Occultism:

>>IX. The cardinal sin of occultism is the contamination of mind and existence, the latter becoming itself an attribute of mind. Mind arose out of existence, as an organ for keeping alive. In reflecting existence, however, it becomes at the same time something else. The existent negates itself as thought upon itself. Such negation is mind’s element. To attribute to it positive existence, ever of a higher order, would be to deliver it up to what it opposes. Late bourgeois ideology has again made it what it was for pre-animism, a being-in-itself modeled on the social division of labor, on the split between manual and intellectual labor, on the planned domination over the former. In the concept of mind-in-itself, consciousness has ontologically justified and perpetuated privilege by making it independent of the social principle by which it is constituted. Such ideology explodes in occultism: it is idealism come full circle. Just by virtue of the rigid antithesis of being and mind, the latter becomes a department of being. If idealism demanded solely on behalf of the whole, the idea, that being be mind and that the latter exist, occultism draws the absurd conclusion that existence is determinate being:

Existence, after it has become, is always benign with a non-being,
so that this non-being is taken up in simple unity with the being.
Non-being taken up in being, the fact that the concrete whole is
in the form of being, of immediacy, constitutes determinateness
as such.

The occultists take literally the non-being as in ‘simple unity with being’, and their kind of concreteness is a surreptitious short-cut from the whole to the determinate which can defend itself by claiming that the whole, having once been determined, is no longer the whole. They call to metaphysics: Hic Rhodus hic salta: if the philosophic investment of spirit with existence is determinable, then finally, they sense, any scattered piece of existence must be justifiable as a particular spirit. The doctrine of the existence of the spirit, the ultimate exaltation of bourgeois consciousness, consequently bore teleologically within it the belief in spirits, its ultimate degradation. The shift to existence, always ‘positive’ and justifying the world, implies at the same time that thesis of the positivity of mind, pinning it down, transposing the absolute into appearance. Whether the whole objective world as ‘product’ is to be spirit, or a particular thing a particular spirit, cease to matter, and the world-spirit becomes the supreme Spirit, the guardian angel of the established, de-spiritualized order. On this the occultists live: their mysticism is the enfant terrible of the mystical moment in Hegel. They take speculation to the point of fraudulent bankruptcy. In passing off determinate being as mind, they put objectified mind to the test of existence, which must prove negative. No spirit exists.<<

Those of us ‘non-spiritual types’, who are repulsed by the farcically fraudulent and parasitical nature of all ‘organized faith’, and who witnessed the brutal murders of the 18 innocent civilians in Lhasa on 14-15 March—two of them children whose heads were bashed in while still on their bikes—and two unarmed police—all of whom, it should be reiterated, were as much Tibetans (if not more so because they were residents) than His Holiness the DL and his swarm of swamis-in-exile—were as horrified as any be-robed transcendentalist or suede-elbowed Sinologists.

But our response was not to deny the violence we had witnessed—to fantasize it out of existence as theatre—or to keen a quavering rationalization of this evil as being caused by the very victims, themselves, the Tibetan-Chinese, who, after all, had so oppressed their murderers for so very long that simple vengeance (even unto the stoning and burning of innocent women and children) should be understood and, thereby, forgiven. This morally bereft reasoning was recently tested in the Balkans, then in Rwanda, and is now boilerplate for the anti-communist left in its Human Rights (Victims Rights) crusade against decent popular government.

Our ‘god-less’ response has been to pursue the truth behind the terrible events we witnessed as it would be demonstrated by the critically tested and justly confirmed evidence we would compile. And, happily enough—or not—its desperate clinging to the purses strings of its hideous masters has made the lies of the cravenly servile media quite transparent—like the Emperor’s new clothes.

So, Free Tibet? From what?

Mick Collins
CirqueMinime/Paris

“Useful idiots” are people who due to ideological commitments, lack of political experience, personal emotions, or many other causes actually truly believe the biased stuff they espouse. Disinformation agents love useful idiots because they are often the most effective propagandists of all. They are emotionally committed to their “cause,” blind to new facts or rational interpretations, and tireless in their efforts to convince others that “their” point of view is the only one to be believed.

Why do I say that Martens fits this profile? She gives herself away in the first part of this interview where she demonizes Tibetan art and Buddhism and contrasts it with a fluffy and uninformed view of Chinese art. Following that she presents a wildly inaccurate view of Tibetan history, one that anyone can check for themselves. From then on, her argumentative techniques include selective evidence, denial of evidence, and a rather strict PRC “party line” on all things Tibetan.

The facts about Tibet are not hard to find. Here is a very brief outline that may be of help to readers that want to think clearly on the subject of Tibet.

1) Start with the history. The short explanation is Tibet is not part of China. The long explanation can be found here: The Tibet-China Conflict: History and Polemics: http://www.eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs/PS007.pdf

2) Then go to the recent history. It is one of occupation and repression. The facts are easy to verify if you remove ideological blinders. Avoid the silly trap of comparing Tibet’s present-day “material wealth” to pre-1949 Tibetan society. Someone already made the point above that virtually all societies show improvement in this area. Also, avoid demonizing the Dalai Lama; just listen to what he actually says.

3) Then consider what the Dalai Lama actually means by his “middle way.” Here is a quote that puts it quite well.:

“His Middle Way can only be understood in the context of the two extremes it moves between. One extreme is unilateral surrender to China’s propaganda claims that it has always owned Tibet, which is simply not true historically, but never mind, Tibetans [should] just give up and accept an overwhelming Chinese colonial presence. The other extreme is to use any means possible to reclaim full sovereign independence and fight for it, including violence if necessary.

The Dalai Lama is principled in his adherence to nonviolence due to his Buddhist faith, and so he cannot go for the violent option. And he is determined to preserve the freedom of Tibetan Buddhism in its homeland, so he cannot acquiesce to the surrender of the Tibetan national identity that the Chinese cultural genocide policy demands, remaking the Tibetans into Chinese (an impossibility, of course).

Therefore, he sincerely proposes a genuine autonomy within a Chinese Union, offering a legitimate, voluntary union with China to avoid violence from either side, since a century of nationalist as well as communist propaganda has convinced most Chinese people that Tibet somehow belongs to them. He backs such an arrangement on the condition of receiving from Beijing a real autonomy within the whole plateau (including all ethnic Tibetan areas over 12,000 feet in altitude, so as to protect the four million Tibetans who live outside the present Tibet Autonomous Region, which is less than half of traditional Tibet). This “one-country, two-systems” arrangement for the regional Tibetan government requires a withdrawal of Han colonists and military occupation, and economic and environmental self-determination.

Under this arrangement, China would get real ownership of Tibet resulting from Tibetan self-determination as part of China, and Tibetans would get real internal freedom in their homeland, to practice their Buddhism and maintain their way of life and restore their delicate environment. This is the Middle Way proposal, in brief outline.” (http://www.beliefnet.com/story/231/story_23154_1.html)

4) If more information is required, research state control of religion, free speech, dissent, and so on in China today. This information can be found quite easily on the internet.

Exclusive: Chinese police kill eight after opening fire on monks and Tibet protesters: ‘They cried long live the Dalai Lama – then the firing started’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3683878.ece

I can tell from her comments on Chinese v. Tibetan Buddhas that Elizabeth Martens doesn’t know Buddhism from chickens, and her “FAQ” is nothing but propaganda from the government of China.

I don’t doubt that mobs of Tibetans turned murderous in March, but China has only itself to blame. China is repeating all of the mistake imperial powers have made through the ages in regard to their colonies. If they had worked with the Dalai Lama instead of turning him into a scapegoat, Tibet could be a genuine autonomous region of China instead of an exploited and oppressed colony of China.

The Real China and the Olympics

By Hu Jia and Teng Biao
Saturday, April 5, 2008

This week, a Beijing court sentenced human rights activist Hu Jia to 3 1/2 years in prison for subverting state authority and to one additional year’s loss of his “political rights.” He was arrested in part for co-authoring, with Teng Biao, an open letter on human rights. Below, The Post printsHuman Rights Watch’s translation of the Sept. 10, 2007, letter.

…China still practices literary inquisition and holds the world record for detaining journalists and writers, as many as several hundred since 1989, according to incomplete statistics. As of this writing, 35 Chinese journalists and 51 writers are still in prison. Over 90 percent were arrested or tried after Beijing’s successful bid for the Olympics in July 2001. For example, Shi Tao, a journalist and a poet, was sentenced to ten years in prison because of an e-mail sent to an overseas website. Dr. Xu Zerong, a scholar from Oxford University who researched the Korean War, was sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment for “illegally providing information abroad.” Qingshuijun [Huang Jinqiu], a freelance writer, was sentenced to a 12-year term for his online publications. Some writers and dissidents are prohibited from going abroad; others from returning to China.

Every year in mainland China, countless websites are closed, blogs deleted, sensitive words filtered. Many websites hosted abroad are blocked. Overseas radio and television programs are interfered with or strictly prohibited. Although the Chinese government has promised media freedom for foreign journalists for 22 months, before, during, and after the Beijing Olympics, and ending on October 17, 2008, an FCCC [Foreign Correspondents Club in China] survey showed that 40 percent of foreign correspondents have experienced harassment, detention or an official warning during news gathering in Beijing and other areas. Some reporters have complained about repeated violent police interference at the time they were speaking with interviewees. Most seriously, Chinese interviewees usually become vulnerable as a result. In June 2006, Fu Xiancai was beaten and paralyzed after being interviewed by German media. In March 2007, Zheng Dajing was beaten and arrested after being interviewed by a British TV station.

Religious freedom is still under repression. In 2005, a Beijing pastor, Cai Zhuohua, was sentenced to three years for printing Bibles. Zhou Heng, a house church pastor in Xinjiang, was charged with running an “illegal operation” for receiving dozens of boxes of Bibles. From April to June 2007, China expelled over 100 suspected U.S., South Korean, Canadian, Australian, and other missionaries. Among them were humanitarian workers and language educators who had been teaching English in China for 15 years. During this so-called Typhoon 5 campaign, authorities took aim at missionary activities so as to prevent their recurrence during the Olympics.

On September 30, 2006, Chinese soldiers opened fire on 71 Tibetans who were escaping to Nepal. A 17-year-old nun died and a 20-year-old man was severely injured. Despite numerous international witnesses, the Chinese police insisted that the shooting was in self-defense. One year later, China tightened its control over Tibetan Buddhism. A September 1, 2007, regulation requires all reincarnated lamas to be approved by Chinese authorities, a requirement that flagrantly interferes with the tradition of reincarnation of living Buddhas as practiced in Tibet for thousands of years. In addition, Chinese authorities still ban the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet and a world-renowned pacifist, from returning to Tibet.

Since 1999, the government has banned many religious beliefs such as Falungong and the Three Servants. Their followers have experienced extremely cruel and planned persecutions. Many died from abuse, suffered torture, brainwashing, imprisonment and labor camp internment for persisting in their faith, possessing religious books, making DVDs and writing articles to expose the truth of the persecution.

China has the highest death penalty rate in the world. Execution statistics are treated as “state secrets.” However, experts estimate that 8,000-10,000 people are sentenced to death in China every year, among them not only criminals and economic convicts, but totally innocent citizens, such as Nie Shubin, Teng Xingshan, Cao Haixin and Hugejiletu, whose innocence was proven only after they were already dead.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040402982.html?referrer=reddit