Posted on 02/19/2010 12:15:27 PM PST by nickcarraway
On July 3, 1942, only seven months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a personal letter to the then seven-year-old Dalai Lama that was to be carried to Tibet's spiritual leader in Lhasa by the OSS officers, Major Ilya Tolstoy, grandson of the famous novelist, and Captain Brooke Dolan, Harvard-educated experienced South Asia and China hand. It took these two intrepid adventurers until December to overcome the political, diplomatic, and physical obstacles between Washington and the very distant Tibet.
Friendship between the United States and the spiritual leadership of Tibet was the intent, and the two emissaries successfully returned to Washington bearing personal gifts -- as chosen by the Dalai Lama's advisors -- to the American president. In operational terms, approval of construction of an overland route from India to China had been the objective since closure of the famed Burma Road. The contact with the Dalai Lama was cleared by the British Foreign Secretary's office, but it was clearly a source of annoyance for the Chinese, who even in the days before the Communist takeover held a proprietary attitude toward Tibet. By 1958, eight years after the Chinese Communist takeover of Tibet, supporters of the Dalai Lama had become convinced that Mao planned to have the Tibetan spiritual leader either assassinated or kidnapped to spend the rest of his life in Chinese isolation. By the end of that year the chief of CIA's Far East operations division, Desmond Fitzgerald, convinced his superior, CIA Director Allen Dulles, that an urgent operation had to be mounted to extract the now 23-year-old Dalai Lama from his monastery in Lhasa.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Count Ilya Tolstoy, left, Captain Brooke Dolan, centre, and a mounted Gurkha guide can be seen riding across Tibet in 1942.
Some in the United States may not like the Dalai Lama because he believes homosexuality is unnatural and doesn't believe in abortion.
Superb book about this.
Good enough so far!!
The Dalai Lama supports the 2nd Amendment also!
What’s the name of the book?
Great gig: touring around the world first class and selling the regurgitated writings of the religious authors before you.
I could not remember the precise title. SUPERB book, and I noticed that at Amazon it's a 5.0, so others were impressed, too.
REVIEWS - Into Tibet - The CIA's First Atomic Spy and his Secret
"A scrupulously documented account of Cold War intrigue. ... Mackiernan had been spying in China. Ironically, it was Tibetans who killed him. ... The author's long-term residence in Nepal provides "a significant qualification for his ...
http://www.intotibet.info/reviews.html
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Into Tibet: The CIA's First Atomic Spy and His Secret Expedition to Lhasa by Thomas Laird
In 1950 , forces from Communist China poured into Tibet in order to "liberate" ... The invasion took place as the Cold War was approaching its height and China was ...
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Into-Tibet/Thomas.../e/9780802117144
ping
Not everybody can be an L. Ron Hubbard.
Not everybody can be an L. Ron Hubbard.
Perhaps, but he calls himself a marxist
At a gathering at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), he said: “I am a Marxist monk, a Buddhist Marxist. I belong to the Marxist camp, because unlike capitalism, Marxism is more ethical. Marxism, as an ideology, takes care of the welfare of its employees and believes in distribution of wealth among the people of the state.”
Delivering a lecture on Ethics and Business, the Tibetan leader-in-exile said the global economy has created vast economic differences in every country of the world. “In the absence of ethical handling of money, the whole community suffer from a sense of insecurity. Exploitation of workers is maximum in developing countries. There are very high degrees of exploitation in India and China, similar to the exploitation during industrialisation of Western countries a century ago,” he said.
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/I-am-a-Marxist-monk-Dalai-Lama/263190/
Merton said one could read in Marx the same desire to evolve from cupiditas to caritas. Marx's idea of communism was a progression from individual capitalist greed to compassionate supportive community where "each gives according to his capacity and receives according to his needs." Now that's a definition of monastic community, Merton said. In his opinion, the monastic community was the only place in which the Marxist ideal can be realized. It cannot be done within communism; but it can be done within monasticism.
Having lived a monastic life his entire life the Dalai Lama likely sees things from a monastic perspective.
If he wants to be a monk - great. Trading one marxist regime for another hardly seems to be in the best interest of Tibetans. History has shown that the poor have fared better by a country mile in a free capitalistic economic system. Pie in the sky marxist economics has a much currency with me as global warming science; monks of any stripe not withstanding.
He is a monk. He has never suggested that Tibet should have a Marxist gov. That’s completely out of context of his remarks. At any rate he is not an economist and no one, including Tibetans, are interested in his views on models of governance.
Few realize also that Tibetan guerrilla groups were CIA trained in the mountains of Colorado.Soon to be released documentary to combat the revisionist history liberal wing nuts who are some of the DLs followers in the West.
http://www.ciaintibet.com/about_project.htm
Wow! that’s excellent. I look forward to that coming out. Few realize that the liberal western press willingly repeated whatever lies Beijing fed them about Tibet. Including and especially the press in Europe. Those shining examples of human rights supporters.
Yes, Chiona and the Liberal Left have cauterized just about everything on the web about the Kham freedom fighters. They were good, good people. I miss them. They are old now.
The problem seems to be that many people confuse voluntary communal living in a relatively small group, closely tied by religious or family bonds, with 'barrel of the gun' Marxism, where entire classes of people are exterminated among a large, ethnically diverse population. The survivors then become slaves to the State.
Marx described his philosophy as "Hegelianism turned on its head". To the extent that Hegel incorporated Christian ethics, Marxism is also "Christianity turned on its head."
Charity loses its meaning, and man is robbed of his duty as a moral agent when the State does the giving (and the taking!) away from the individual. And of course, the great 'inequality' of wealth the Dali Lama speaks about is due to capitalistic societies outstripping third world societies tied to feudalism, cronyism and exploitation, not to mention low expectations for the individual.
A college Professor of mine long ago quoted a scholar as saying, "Marxism has been writing blank checks on the moral bank account of Christianity for 100 years".
I don’t think the Dalai Lama is a student of any of that. When people ask him a question he will answer it. Not much he would decline to give his opinion on. Naturally, it seems, most of the press are idiots and ask him stupid questions that are completely irrelevant to his life or his interests.
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