Again, we're seeing people coming out of the woodwork to "Free Tibet". I'm very curious what it is, exactly, that these people want to see happen. I'm assuming that they intend upon removing China from Tibet and restoring the Dalai Lama and his government. This makes me curious about:
1) How do people think that this will come about?
2) Was the prior government an example of justice and equity, or are people being scammed into supporting yet another dictator in exile who knows how to play the media?
For number two, this is a must read. Nothing like seeing that the activists are actually trying to reinstate a brutal theocracy which practiced serfdom/slavery, torture, mutilation, and many other practices which would be considered outrageous by the same activists. If anything, the Chinese may actually be better for the poor of Tibet in some ways. Go figure.
3 comments:
Wow. Somewhat suprised by this information, since I had always gone by the assumption that the Chinese invasion had been a power and land grab. I have little to no historic knowledge of that region, and this is eye-opening to say the least.
I remain a big opponent to Red China of course, and agree that even if you eliminate the Tibet situation from the argument, China is hardly an appropriate host for the olympics, considering some of the situations there, namely the execution of political prisoners for the reselling of their organs.
But to hear the truth about the Tibetan lifestyle in a historical context is shocking.
I'm certainly not a fan of an authoritarian government. I do, however, like to look at what activists are actually advocating to see if they have even the most remote clue as to what they're talking about. Nine times out of ten, they not only don't, but usually are advocating some sort of hyper-authoritarian group because they're photogenic.
This definitely opened my eyes as well. Call me a realist though because at the end of the day I'd rather have a free Tibet loyal to the US than an occupied Tibet, especially if it meant we could help shape it more as a Western style democracy. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely so anything to upset the balance of power amongst the Chi-Comms is okay in my book. Just look at the USSR/Russia. I think most reasonable people would say that, even though it is still somewhat of an authoritarian government the world is better off now than it was prior to 1991. And that doesn't even bring in to account the old Jeffersonian adage of watering the tree of liberty with the blood of revolution (and yes, I know ol' Thom retracted that statement later on but the general idea of upseting the power base, even if it's with another power base, still applies, hopefully with a bit less carnage however).
Another thing that came to mind in reading this though was the age old debate, especially amongst those on the right, about liberal bias in the media and how it affects people's world view. Before reading this post I would have been an ardent supporter of reinstating the Dalai Lama simply because I hadn't realized that his government had committed some of the very same attrocities as the Chinese occupation. And the same goes for the folks that get all their information from the mainstream media. If the Seattle Times does very little other than reporting the likes of Abu Graibe and how many people died in Iraq last week and how Bush choked on a pretzel then yes, they're all going to think he's the worst president we've ever had. But if they had a bit more balance and talked about how many schools we've built, how the violence has radically declined since the surge began and how Bush has directed more money towards poverty initatives (never mind the fact that the president has no real power over the budget so if anyone's to blame or credit it's the opposition controlled congress), then maybe all the blame America first, Bush = Hitler folks I see at Westlake Center on a weekly basis would be singing a different tune.
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