forgive me also for pointing out that the Chinese goverment has been proven to have:

1) used undercover agents to dress as monks and incite violence, then claim it was Tibetan monks doing it

2) hacked and cyber-attacked those who support Tibet

so, I must ask, do we know that they do not also photoshop?
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See the new Agonist Topic Section on Tibet

that you may want to consider:

Toronto is not a satellite territory occupied by the Canadian government and oppressed for many decades. Same with Chicago and the American government. However, Tibet is. And are these rioters marching in Beijing? Or in Lhasa, the capitol of Tibet?

You will *never* comprehend this looking at it through Western eyes. You will *never* comprehend this situation unless you consider it from the Chinese side of the chessboard - or more to the point, unless you acknowledge that there *is* a Chinese side to the chessboard.

I'm no expert, but I spent some time in some degree of immersion in Chinese culture, and I can tell you this - from their historical perspective, Tibet is not some "spoil of war" occupied territory, it is a *historical province* of China, briefly separated and now reunited.

Rightly or wrongly, to them, Tibet seeking independence is like New Mexico seceding - and to them, foreign interference in Tibet is *internal interference in China*. It's not proxy wars in VIetnam, it's the KGB sending agents to raise a secessionist rebellion in New Mexico.

And one implication of this is that they will thus defend their hold on Tibet up to, and beyond, the brink of nuclear war.

Disagree with that all you like; many do. But you won't *understand* the dynamic until you acknowledge that this is their POV - that it's not a "negotiating position".

For what it's worth, I've looked at their historical claims; for what it's worth, as reluctant as I am as someone immersed at one time in his life in Buddhist thought, and sympathetic to the plight of the Tibetans to admit it, the Chinese claim to Tibet is on a more defensible historical footing than historically based claims we've acknowledged from others.

But let's say it isn't - that it's a complete fantasy of theirs. It's still the way they see it - and to not take that into account is to utterly misjudge the amount of resolve the Chinese have on this issue, and indulged to its fullest would lead to nothing less than complete disaster for Tibetans - bloodshed, suffering, brutal crackdown and ultimate defeat. Unless the West were willing to fight a nuclear war over Tibet - and we aren't.

As a side note - it's my personal belief that the Chinese government are heavy handed, authoritarian, repressive swine and I'd hate to live on turf they ruled. My sympathies are squarely with the Tibetans.

Having said that, I'm disgusted by the suspicion I might need to say that explicitly. I'm not going to tart my language up pro forma to demonize China with every second breath just so nobody thinks I'm "praising them with faint damnation". I don't waste my energy like that. Consider it said.

this comment holds good content, a substantive overview.
myself, i know little about china, but a favorite topic for me is the falun gong. years ago, i heard of them first somewhere in a piece solely about them and what they do outside of any context of they being oppressed or any political context and i was enamored, very sympathetic -they sounded cool. then i heard about the oppression and it of course troubled me and it became my keystone interest in china. this comment adds a bit to the surrounding context for me. i cannot understand why in the world china treats the falun gong as they do, i mean it's beyond belief, but i'm getting the larger picture slowly, dimly. so slowly and so dimly, that it underscores your point here. the picture i'm seeing seems to return to and circle around spirituality, religion, and where *it* intersects with or threatens the government to the government's view. i am slowly beginning to appreciate dalai lama's delicate position in that.

as an old reader of eric margolis, i cannot miss his ad at his site for his 'war at the top of the world'. i never paid it too much mind, but his recent post on this situation made reference to it and points out that the book is partly about tibet. somehow, that surprised me as the photo of the book cover in the ad suggests it is generally about asia, and afghanistan. now i'm curious to read that book.

How many Tibetans are there? China has obscured census figures. When I met with the Dalai Lama, who inspired my book, `War at the Top of the World’ - which is in part about Tibet - he told me there were over seven million Tibetans. About three million are in Tibet proper, and the rest in the neighboring Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai, to which protests have spread. The last two Chinese provinces used to form part of historical Tibet.

http://www.ericmargolis.com/archives/2008/03/how_to_resolve.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_gong

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See the new Agonist Topic Section on Tibet

i am familiar with the page.
upon returning there i didn't recall if it also mentioned the extreme of organ harvesting. i was glad to see it did. thanks for the return trip.

organ harvesting.
man, that just says a mountainfull.

and here I would like to believe that organ harvesting from such "criminals" as falun gong, was just an unban legend.

Actually I went to the link to learn more myself about it, then figured I should post it for the other readers.

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See the new Agonist Topic Section on Tibet

nondogmatic, nonfanatical -the page references these two qualities.

would that we had such a strong movement here.

nondogmatic, nonfanatical.

how like water. how indomitable. how peaceful and peace-imbuing. how threatening to would-be dominators.

how nourishing for me with all my own dogmatic fanaticism.
...
i remember reading 'the dharma bums' by jack kerouac, after i had read his seminal work 'on the road'. jack took in gary snyder's japanese buddhist influence and swilled it down whole hog. it became my favorite kerouac book. i love it still. i love snyder's place in it and how jack pours snyder out to us as a deluge. snyder himself is the reality though.

http://www.sover.net/~nichael/nlc-poetry/gs1.html

i raise kerouac to exemplify manic zeal. fanaticism, dogmatism. it's too tempting and too glib to say well [we] westerners are thus and thus and so and so in comparison, and also it's hard to bring kerouac into any topic without the impact of his alcohol intake coming along with it, but still...

every country, every culture, every place may very well benefit from a leavening effect a 'nondogmatic, nonfanatical' presence may bring to bear. if not for the resulting repressive reactions.

qi gong classes, like Tai Chi classes, are getting very popular in the USA, catching up on yoga. I really get a lot out of doing it. Never really knew much about Falun Gong, but wikipedia says it's basically just a popularized movement of promoting qi gong and a lifestyle in accord with it, which is what many yoga practitioners do here anyway.

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See the new Agonist Topic Section on Tibet

http://www.feeltheqi.com/

My qi gong teacher studied with this guy, Roger Jahnke (who is European, living in USA now I think) and I have one of his videos. I think he's a positive force, definitely not political.

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See the new Agonist Topic Section on Tibet

thanks! it's melded into my fold wonderfully and i'll certainly be incorporating it into my pages, and hopefully further into my life. apropos, at the very least, as my lady and i need be less sedentary and the prospects are walking about our area are uninspiring while this is quite the opposite and offers a depth and greater context for deeper communion and exploration and understanding.

this place could really really use such a teacher to implement such a program. you have no idea how much. there's a grassy area between the building and the lake out back that would be perfect for it, especially now with spring approaching.

candle lake ducks at length:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VjnF9NWrLA

maybe he has a knife so he could cut out his own organs, saving the chinese government the trouble of doing so later.

these people have been seriously oppressed, and would have every right to have guns and bombs in their hands. it's not that i'm seeing this with "western eyes" as you later point out...but i'm seeing this from HUMAN eyes. this is something more people need to do. quit being nationalist and start being humanist. let someone try to hold me back with their own reasoning and "laws" and see if i don't completely rebel against it until one of us is dead.

point made.

leads *away* from people being bayonetted through the guts en masse in an utterly fruitless, doomed-to-failure-before-it-begins quest which I strongly suspect is being at least exploited, and likely orchestrated, solely in order to provide a media spectacle to embarrass China in advance of a sporting event - let's just leave it at "apparently I work from a different definition of what the terms 'humanist' (or 'sympathy', or 'compassion') mean".

being in no position to lecture, what the Chinese government is doing is clearly both dishonest, corrupt, immoral, and illegal. (See my post above responding to Escher Sketch)

The issue for me is who will stand up to them, and how (what is effective action) not what George Bush says or does.

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See the new Agonist Topic Section on Tibet

on this forum with "the US," by which you meant the government/nation as a whole? Can't individual citizens of the US throw rocks at the Chinese on this issue?

Also, I agree that our government would be very hypocritical if it made a big issue out of this--but it would still be the correct thing to do.

"...our government would be very hypocritical if it made a big issue out of this--but it would still be the correct thing to do."

An apt and pithy summation of what it is to be American these days.

this could apply for any imperial power, especially any with reasonable large land holdings, that have been under their sway for some time.

IMO, these discussions could have been had, and indeed might have been had, in the days of the Vice-royalty of India....might have been had before Nunavut split off, and was considered an unbroken part of the Northwest Territories.

One significant complicating factor in talking about Chinese holdings, and what the Chinese have 'held' historically versus what they *felt* they held historically, should be in *WHO* was actually doing the holding. The present-day government, depending on the legal argument one tries to make, does not necessarily have a solid claim on lands held by the government it usurped/replaced, nor could the prior, Kuomintang regime make the same claim, replacing as it did the Manchu Dynasty of Imperial China.

This being said, it's quite possible to propose an argument in which Red China has no legitimate claim to any lands held by prior regimes, thereby making legitimate any independence-campaigns within those lands....If you can find people willing to listen, you can probably make a mint (or at least line your pockets) arguing this in court, as long as someone exissts to pay your bills.

Could all this be equated with New Mexico seceding? Maybe not *as a State*, but you could argue say, for the Navajo Nation wishing to take its lands, found a sovreign nation, and attain recognition by parties in the UN General Assembly. Or.......anybody thinking Taiwan?, or even any number of archipelagoes in the Pacific ocean (the Tuamotus come to mind--Tahiti, Bora-bora, etc. are part of 'French Polynesia)

Personally, I'm in favour of China stepping back, and letting the Tibetan people (and yes, that'll probably have to include all the Han transplants) decide whether or not they want to remain in China, or become their own nation. China may not like this (and I wouldn't expect ANY imperial power to like it---probably fight it tooth and nail), but it would do well in building China's cache in the world community as a 'truly mature society/civilisation'.

........sigh.....back to watching 'Life of Brian'....Judaean People's Front, People's Front of Judaea.....splitter!!!

-5.75,-4.05
"We're all fucked. It helps to remember that." --George Carlin

... I'm in favour of China stepping back, and letting the Tibetan people (and yes, that'll probably have to include all the Han transplants) decide whether or not they want to remain in China, or become their own nation. China may not like this (and I wouldn't expect ANY imperial power to like it---probably fight it tooth and nail), but it would do well in building China's cache in the world community as a 'truly mature society/civilisation'...

- on the day that America lets this happen:

"Republic Of Alaska"

I own one of William Spears' pins, by the way - got it in Alaska back in the 'eighties as a lark when I first heard the term.

Yes, you're absolutely correct. What you're claiming could indeed be argued.

It doesn't matter at all, because it's not what China believes, so it will inevitably come down to "stuff your argument - it's ours, it's always been ours, the thought we'd give it back is ludicrous, and if you try to pry it away from us we'll escalate as far as we have to in response, right up to nuclear war".