Posted on 07/05/2010 3:57:59 PM PDT by Colofornian
In the popular imagination, Tibet is a land of snow-capped mountains and sweeping vistas, fluttering prayer flags, crystal blue skies, saffron-robed monks spinning prayer wheels... SNIP
Tibet's enduring hold on Western minds -- together with the energetic, globe-trotting advocacy of the Dalai Lama -- helps explain why the concerns of the region's minority population are so familiar to so many so far away. (By comparison, it took violence in the streets of Urumqi to awaken foreign readers to the agitation of another of China's minority groups, the Uighurs.) In the Washington, D.C., neighborhood where I live, more than a few homes have decorative Tibetan prayer flags strung sentimentally across balconies and backyard porches. This week, U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to meet with the Dalai Lama in the Oval Office -- over the inevitable protests of Chinese authorities.
SNIP
As for Tibet itself, it's no Shangri-la.
SNIP
Judging by appearances, the new generation of Tibetans seems, in a superficial sense, rather un-Tibetan. But that, too, is an oversimplification, as it became clear from talking to Tashi that he certainly thinks differently than Han Chinese his age...he told me that he and his family members continue to consult their lama, the equivalent of a priest in Tibetan Buddhism, about major life decisions. Recently that meant seeking the lama's spiritual appraisal of whether Tashi's sister should marry a pair of brothers then wooing her (Tibetan custom permits polygamy in certain circumstances involving siblings).
Many versions of Buddhism are practiced in China, some with tacit consent of the authorities, but Tibetan Buddhism has proved particularly difficult to integrate because, as with the Islam practiced by Uighurs, it invests authority in local religious leaders who rival the authority of local officials. On issues ranging from property rights to marriage customs, sparks may fly...
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
And here I thought Buddhism was also a Religion of Peace!!!! Gotta love Free Republic! Learn something new everyday.
Good points. There’s more to say about the proffered framing of the issue, but it would be rolling up three thousand years of Eastern and Western histories to do so.
However, muayiwah, how do you integrate the government and social circumstance the many kingdoms in the Indian subcontinent before the arrive of the British into your “hills that divide us” construct?
I know, you’re the comedian. ;o)
I'm smiling on the outside, and groaning on the inside. Or groaning on the outside and smiling on the...never mind. It was quite a reasonable contribution to a pointless effort.
FIrst of all India is not China, and vice versa, showing that the principle of hills and valleys being the principal source of political subdivision are sound at even large scales.
Thanks...I think.
I suppose they imagine it will keep the Chicoms from killing their friends and neighbors.
As long as there is a coercive element, and that includes the old "captive nations" concept, it doesn't matter what the subject says.
Quite frankly i've met the man, the wife has met him, the kids have met him several times, and we've visited the Buddhist Center his uncle started in Bloomington, Indiana.
None of these people strike me as being Marxists in particular, nor is it particularly relevant to the current situation.
Eventually the Han will find that they are not biologically suited to high altitude life and will leave the highlands.
What amazes me is that anyone would care what the Dalai Lama says about politics outside his efforts to negotiate with Beijing. He doesn’t claim to be a scholar of political science and AFAIK he’s never taken a class or read a book about it.
Probably so ~ he’s just a monk ~ albeit a rather famous one.
When asked he says “I am only a simple monk.” People should take him at his word on that. People ask him a lot of questions and he usually tries to answer them all. If they don’t ask him if he feels like he is an expert on the subject they bring up he probably won’t say.
And who did they send in? (300 Buddhist monks) That's at least of the level of a "military draft"; or are you going to excuse the German soldiers who were "drafted" in WWII and only blame the Nazi leaders?
And BTW. I'll betcha somebody spending some time digging will find a whole lot more than 300 Buddhist monks involved in this kind of "dirty work" -- given that almost 30,000 Karen people were targeted. (And my recollection from geography is that the Karen people at one time inhabited a very long strip of North-South land...so they're likely to have been spread out)
I’ll betcha the Myanmar government, that killed hundreds of monks three years ago, is even less reliable a source of news than Slate, the Washington Compost and Newsweek.
Sorry about that.
Karen Armed Rebellion in Burma Takes a New Turn: Ex-American Marines as Military Advisors/Trainers: US WatchingThe KNU's effectiveness was severely diminished after the fall of its headquarters at Manerplaw near the Thai border, in 1994. At that time, a group of Buddhist soldiers in the KNLA went over to the side of the Burmese military junta. This group, known as the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), was given territory inside of Burma to rule over in exchange. They played a significant part in the capture of Manerplaw. While the DKBA claims to be fighting against anti-Buddhist discrimination inside the KNU, it is in practice the small private army of a warlord in alliance with the Burmese military junta.
So the Buddhists fighting Christian Karen are Karen themselves. Things suck when a brutal military regime plays every group they can get their hooks into against every other group.
You wrote:
“The Carpatho-Rhatians descend from a Cossack group sent into quell a rebellious new possession of the Czar.”
Who? I think your conflating the Carpatho-Rusyn with the Rhaetians. They actually live very far apart.
His version of events that led them to live far West of where they'd originated is consistent with what you read on the net.
NOTE: I cannot be responsible for anomalous spellings that have their origins with individuals doing their own transliterations from Russian written in cyrilic characters to a Western Slavic tongue written in latin characters.
Okay, but in English there is no such thing as Carpatho-rhatians.
Which is just fine ~ none of those guys live in the Carpathian mountains in England ~
I’m curious. Is this the same dalai lamma who, as a child, had his picture taken with explorer Richard Haliburton back in the 1930s? I know Lowell Thomas met him back in the 1940s before he fled Tibet.
I dunno... how OLD is he?
Sorry solate respnding. I have not heard anything about thi, but it says state sponsored groups, which I interperet as being probably soldiers in robes. They are really getting crazy in the run up their sham of an election
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