on a Muslim Center at "Ground Zero"

Let the people of America decide whether or not to have a Muslim Center there at Ground Zero.

But let's not let anyone make any decisions based on faulty thinking, rumors or outright political lies. Democracy only works when there is respect and mutual understanding of differences (and not mere tolerance of them).

In my own opinion, perhaps the best thing to do would be to have a non-sectarian place of congregation, where people of all faiths and traditions, and those who are atheists or agnostics can gather and learn from each other. But I know this civilized notion is a far cry from what most people would believe possible. But how are we to put an end to religious-based intolerance, prejudice and discrimination if we do not start to make all of us hoopleheads congregate together and share?

Another alternative would be to have a center for each faith, including something for secular humanists, so we do not leave out anyone. We could have a mosque, a cathedral, a church, a buddhist temple, a pagan temple (Wiccans and others could decide whether or not to call it whatever it is to be called), a bahai temple, a synogogue, etc.

We are all on this planet together, whether we like it or not, so we had better start to learn to like it.

The side of people against having a Muslim Center have made some outrageous claims about Islam based on prejudice and fear. It is time to put those to rest.

Islam and Muslims (followers of Islam) did NOT attack the US on September 11th, 2001. Radical extreme militants who follow Islam (and used their religion as a primary excuse to carry out their crimes) attacked the US. You can say I am playing with semantics, but I retort with the fact I have a yearning for accuracy and truth.

Words are OUR tools. We are not the tools of our words. It is time we start using them correctly, like upright human beings would use them. It is time to realize that with words come imagery and thinking. We wouldn't have developed into human beings (from out of our hominid ancestors) if we didn't develop the capacity for language and the symbolic thinking patterns that emerged from it (music, art, religion, language, etc). If you think this idea wrong, then explain to me which of our current fields of endeavor (philosophy, and again music et allia) could exist without a capacity for language? There are none.

Language is often thought of as speech by many people. But we have complex languages based on gesture used by non-hearing people. Complex codes and symbols that do not rely on speech have been used for millenia. And brain-injured people exhibit an array of complex speech patterns mimicking language without any symbolic understanding displayed.

I digressed to hopefully start some reflection about who we are as a species, collectively and individually.

Religions are often cited as both one of the highest and one of the most atrocious forms of human expression. And people are still fighting causes as if their own religion was the ultimate truth with all others being false. The truth of the matter is higher than this territorial pissing contest. Think of words again now. How we use them. How we use voice and gesture and symbol along with our words to convey separation or togetherness.

We can choose to continue the cycle of fear and hatred, suspicion and excuses for doing horrible things to each other. Or we can choose to grow up. It is our choice.

[Friday, September 17, 2010]

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

The 1990s brought some good music. It was the last time when musicians could perform without worrying about looking pretty. Now we have pretty people making pre-fabbed pop crap to the same old worn out beat.

When people think of Seattle's music scene from the 90s, they think of Nirvana and Soundgarden. I think of those, but I include 7 Year Bitch, the Gits, and Bikini Kill. Sadly, by the mid 90s, the Gits and Nirvana were gone. (Nirvana to Cobain's suicide, and the Gits to Mia's murder).

These two videos are a slice of the energy that existed. It still exists, in Seattle and in other cities. Non-emo rock is still around. The bands have changed. The faces are different, but the soul remains.

7 Year Bitch's music are a slice of that time in the 1990s, just before "alternative" became the marketing label for rock bands that had too much punk and blues in them to be considered straight up hard rock or metal. Neither Mia Zapata nor Kurt Cobain had died yet, and it seemed the energy would explode across the country.

They tried to call it "grunge." But that was only another label to avoid the implications of hardcore and punk developing past the 1980s cliches it became associated with.

How about just listening to it, with no labels?

Shedding Light on Some Ignorance

From this map you can see what China has stolen by force, while the world looked away. Millions of inner and central Asians have been killed since then by the occupiers in order to make room for Chinese settlers. Manchuria was the first to fall as its rulers, who at the time were the rulers of China as well, looked away and encouraged genocide against their people.

Inner Mongolia was next to fall in the 1930s, as China fought a brutal civil war between nationalists and communists. Mongolian resistance proved so harsh that Chinese armies of the communist side massacred thousands of the people and moved in Chinese settlers to ensure that there would be no more resistance. As the Chinese nationalists fell to the communists, the communists agreed that they would enforce the old Manchu Empire's boundaries, but this time not only would it include the Manchurians' directly ruled territory, but also all of the lands the Manchus had relations with.

In late 1949, China invaded Tibet. Within months the Tibetan army of the east had collapsed and China controlled over half of Tibet. They forced an agreement with the Dalai Lama's government under threat of more violence. When the Tibetan government declared they would honor the agreement, Tibet exploded in an armed uprising that was not fully crushed until 1974. That Uprising started in east Tibet - known as Kham and Amdo in Tibetan - thousands of PLA soldiers and Tibetan resistance fighters died.

By 1959 the uprising had spread to Lhasa, in Central Tibet - U-tsang in Tibetan. Lhasa at that time was in an uproar of protests over the Tibetan government allowing Chinese troops to make camps outside of the city. This is what is commemorated every March 10th by Tibetans. On March 10th, the flash spark hit the gas can and Lhasa exploded. Amidst the fighting, the Dalai Lama and many senior government officials escaped to India with the help of the resistance they looked down upon. From March to October the PLA estimated that they killed 80.000 Tibetan fighters in and around Lhasa.

Remember this the next time someone tries to tell you that Tibetans pacificistically rolled over for China. Tibetans fought every step of the way. The sacrifices of the resistance are the reason why the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetans could escape. By October of 1959, PLA soldiers, angered at the people they believed they were giving a chance to become "liberated" (which is Maoist slang for "Chinese") for fighting against them, went on an orgy of destruction. Drepung Monastery, at that time the largest educational institution in the world, was shelled and destroyed, with thousands of its scholars and monks killed. The ruins are still there today. This is only one example of the destruction China wrought in Tibet. (Thousands of monasteries, libraries, and schools were destroyed...this years before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution came to Tibet on the backs of the Red Guards, who like all Chinese since, believe they have a right to Tibet.)

The nature of the Tibetan resistance is ignored by many Westerners who prefer to view the Tibetans as lotus-eating monks who have nothing better to do than teach spoiled overfed people how to become spiritual. This resistance is also ignored by Chinese people who are today taught that Tibetans greeted the Chinese with open arms as liberators from a "feudal theocracy." What a dishonor to the Tibetan dead, those who bled, cried and died for their country...to be ignored and forgotten like this, especially by Westerners who always go on about "freedom" and "dignity." I will tell you this, there is more dignity in a Khampa fighter who fought against increasingly devastating odds, but who never gave up, then there is in some overfed American who cries about the price of gas rising. I have met some of the former...they'll set your ass straight about what matters.

-Hugh, designation Kunsang

INDEPENDENT TIBET – THE FACTS (Jamyang Norbu)

I recommend this article to anyone who wishes to start learning Tibetan views of their nation's history with regards to the current Chinese occupation. This is necessary in today's climate because most of the world sees Tibet and Tibetans through the very racist and colonialist viewpoints of the Chinese. The whole colonial "savage being saved by enlightened masters" schema that was used by Europeans for centuries is the same schema projected onto Tibetans by the Chinese - who get very indignant even at the idea that Tibetans may possibly look upon China as an oppressor. Chinese people were taught that they "liberated" the Tibetans. The reality is that they "liberated" the ownership of Tibet from the Tibetan people, who are now being pushed aside - only allowed to live on the margins as long as they cater to official Chinese versions of Tibetan identity. Tibet as a whole now has become entirely controlled and dominated by the Chinese, who now claim Tibetans as a "Chinese" national minority, the better to excuse the dispossession of Tibetans from their land.

In many ways, this is similar to what America has done to Native Americans - lying about the pre-invasion societies, brutally conquering them and calling it "progress," then claiming the land while turning its native inhabitants into a mere ethnic group, subsumed under the dominant people who assume this process has made everything turn out for the best. And by this, meaning "the final best." As in no alternatives for the natives and the very idea of their own independence is considered either extremist or laughable.

But like the nations that existed in what is now the USA before they were invaded and subjugated, Tibet was independent. It was independent right up until the Chinese invasion of 1950. In fact, except for a brief submission to the Mongols, Tibet has never been seriously invaded or ruled by outsiders until 1950. This fact is continually denied by the Chinese government and people who insist that Tibet is an intrinsic part of China and always has been. The American counterpart of this fraud is to simply claim that native nations weren't really "nations" per se but "tribes" and "bands," despite the historical evidence that the vast majority of native people in what is now the US, lived in towns and villages and had settled agricultural lifestyles. It makes it easier on the conquerer's conscious to lie about the people they have conquered. China denies the horrific brutality it has inflicted on Tibet just like America denies the horrific brutality it inflicted on the several nations it destroyed to make the myth of "virgin land" a reality.

I raise the example of Native America as a comparison to help illuminate the situation with regards to the occupation of Tibet so that the next time you may read something like "Old Tibet was a hell on earth" or "China brought progress and modernity to Tibet" or "Tibetan independence is a lie" you may be able to grasp where such ideas come from. Racism and its ugly cousin colonialism are alive and well in the 21st century. The fact that it's being perpetrated by one Asian nation against another (and not by Europeans) shouldn't fool anyone one bit.


Now here is that article.........

INDEPENDENT TIBET – THE FACTS (Jamyang Norbu)


http://www.jamyangnorbu.com/blog/2010/03/04/independent-tibet-–-the-facts/

"This is a considerably revised and expanded version of the document, Losar Gift for Rangzen Activists, that I posted on Feb 25, 2009. This version has new information and illustrations. Last year when I was in India I gave a talk and powerpoint presentation based on this essay at a number of Tibetan schools and centers. I am happy to report that everyone was uplifted and energized by the sheer volume of indisputable facts substantiating Tibetan independence. It may have hit a sore spot in Beijing, though, for I was denounced at length on bbs.tibet.cn for this specific presentation. In order to ensure’s Beijing’s continued “sensitivity” on the issue of Tibetan independence, a Chinese translation (in traditional as well as simplified script) will be up on lovetibet.ti-da.net, and other sites thanks to freedom activist Rosaceae. A full Tibetan translation will be at www.khabdha.org, and also be published in Tibet Times, all thanks to Gedun Rabsal la. You can also go on rangzen.net for the translations and for downloading print-ready pdf files to make flyers. I would like to thank all organizations that printed and distributed flyers last year, and would encourage them and others to do so again this year on March 10th and other occasions. Feel free to contact me for questions or suggestions."

http://www.jamyangnorbu.com/blog/2010/03/04/independent-tibet-–-the-facts/

Remembering Mia, the Gits

Naked Raygun

There is something about this band that screams "Chicago!" I suppose you would have had to have been there. But even if you hadn't, you can feel the "nostalgia" in the music. Not many people know that there was a vibrant punk scene in Chicago, as impressed as they were with the NY and LA scenes (which were largely media confections).

Good Videos in Gàidhlig

The second one has subtitles.







'An Aisling' by Leòdhas MacLeòd.







'Siubhlachan' by Uisdean Murray




Lorg bhidiothan eile mar seo air AbairThusa

"I am he and she is she, but...you're the only you."

"I am he and she is she, but...you're the only you."



When was the last time you heard someone tell you that your worth as an individual was much more than any state or nation, culture or government? Bet it hasn't even happened. Say what you will about anarchism, but it remains the only strain of human inquiry that respects the freedom of the human person to actually be a person.









And because I love this song so much and it makes me think of my sweetheart...i am posting it again...

Notes from the Pig Trough 4

While the US and other western national governments promote talks between China and the Dalai Lama led exiled Tibetan government as "the only way forward," no one seems to notice the sinister undertones of this promotion.

That the talks are useless, and worse, degrading to the Tibetans, is apparent to anyone who follows them closely.

Why would our leaders, Obama included (hoodwinked by Beijing as he is over Tibet, but, strangely, not over the Google incident), continue to insist that such farcical meetings would do any damned good? Have any of them even paid attention to how the Tibetan delegates are treated and spoken to by their Chinese counterparts? It's humiliating and the fact that Tibetan delegates put up with it without punching someone in the face shows their patience, which may or may not be Buddhism's influence.

The promotion of talks between the Beijing government and the Exiled Tibetan Government is simply our "free world" leaders' way of feeling like they are seriously behind the fight for human dignity and rights in the Tibetan situation, all the while turning around and doing business with the butchers of Tibet. It's really about the West and our leaders being self congratulatory, that they are helping the Dalai Lama get a word in with China. It has nothing to do with Tibet and everything to do with appeasing China.

Meanwhile, Tibetans get consigned by the world to continue to suffer.

When Tibet exploded in 2008, media attention quickly shifted from the Tibetan protests inside of Tibet towards "talks to be held" when it was announced that the exile government and Beijing would meet. It was as if the aspirations of Tibetans getting gunned down in the streets in towns across Tibet were no longer newsworthy. What mattered now was that the world's leaders were proclaiming that talks between the Dalai Lama and China would help Tibet. All the while, China was telling those same world leaders to shut up and stay out of it.

China had a point back then and it does now when it tells the world to basically "shut the fuck up" and stay out of the Tibet issue. Beijing can see the BS behind the smiling faces of our "free world" leaders. The PRC knows damned well that our leaders only push the Tibet issue to appease our own self images of ourselves as being behind human rights...which we consider to be a western social heritage...all the while we will deal with them, no matter who they butcher.

We, the "West," collectively sold East Turkestan to China, because it was receiving help from Russia. We, the "West," played with the Tibetan resistance against China when we wanted to punish Mao. But when we, the "West" and more specifically the USA, wanted friendship with China so we could have access to a billion more consumers, we flipped Tibet the bird and ensured that its armed resistance was shut down. We, the "West," even started talking like China, saying things like Tibet has always been a part of China and is an internal Chinese affair.

China remembers this, even though our leaders would rather forget or pretend otherwise. The memory hole would actually work if it wasn't for the fact that things were filmed, photographed, recorded, and written down.

So while you may hear of so-and-so promoting talks between the Dalai Lama's people and the PRC's people (the ninth round of which has just taken place, by the way) and think he or she is a wise powerful leader, you are really hearing that so-and-so is really a cynical bastard who wants to somehow still feel good about ignoring genocide and colonialism, while dealing with the perpetrators.

Think I am wrong? When was the last time you heard Obama or any other so called "free" world leader fess up to the truth and stand up to the butcher-bully of Asia by merely saying Tibetans have a right to their freedom and dignity? You won't hear such a statement from the current crop of media darling but spineless world leaders.

Notes from the Pig Trough 3

China says that its security apparatus in Tibet is there to maintain law and order, and to preserve social tranquility so that people can get on with their day to day affairs. This is true, but it is only meant to be for the colonialist settler population from China. Tibetans are free to partake of this colonialist "social tranquility" and "law and order" only in as much as they are willing to become assimilated to Chinese society and thus complicit with the occupiers.

Tibetans, in short, are free to do as they wish, so long as it is what China wishes. Right now, China wishes for Tibetan nationality to disappear and become forgotten, while Tibetans themselves become Chinese, or get replaced by Chinese settlers, while keeping just enough local flavor to be of interest to tourists.

The Left has tried to obfuscate what the Tibetan movement is all about. You can tell it's a hoodwink when you have articles that claim to be about the "real Tibet" and that seek to unmask the "myths" about the Dalai Lama and the Free Tibet movement. Many Leftists claim that Free Tibet supporters are being naive and unrealistic, and have no connection to the Tibetan people. Some even go so far as to claim they have lived in Tibetan villages or towns and thus would know what "real Tibet" is all about. The funny thing is that these Leftists' writings and comments are lock stock and barrel exact copies of what PRC propaganda claims about Tibet.

When I read comments like "the Dalai Lama is not the peace promoting monk Tibet supporters think he is" I can only laugh. The Dalai Lama, whether you agree with his ideas or not, leads a fairly open life. Most of us would never lead such an open life, with our keen senses of personal privacy. So to claim he is not as he seems is absurd. Or malicious, since Beijing constantly tries to portray him as the Devil Incarnate.

And to the Colonialist Chinese, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, is a thorn in the side of the whole empire building project in Tibet. Because the mere fact that he escaped occupied Tibet and has never returned, speaks volumes about the illegal control China wields over Tibet and its people. The fact that the man exists and visits many places around the world, keeps the question of Tibet alive in the media and among the darling superstar world of politicians and cinema celebrities.

If tomorrow, the Dalai Lama, broke his Buddhist monk vows and told Tibetans to arm themselves and drive out the Chinese, you would see a war in Central Asia within weeks. That is how much His Holiness is still loved by the people of Tibet, even after decades of Chinese re-education and propaganda. He would never suggest such a thing, however...although Beijing and its western running dog apologists would like to convince everyone that it is the Dalai Lama who is stirring up Tibetans into wanting to be separate from China (because, as the Beijing line goes, the Dalai Lama wants to become king again with his people as slaves).

Yeah. As if Chinese occupation, brutality and violent racism against Tibetans has nothing to do with the Tibetan desire to be free of China. As if Chinese settlement and colonization, pushing Tibetans into ever more useless lands, or moving them from the cities to make way for more settlers, has nothing to do with their desire to be free from China. As if the turning of a proud people into living Himalayan tourist trinkets who have no say in their identity has nothing to do with their desire to be free of China.

As if over 2000 years of independent national history and cultural development has nothing to do with the raging fires of rangzen. Fires that will eventually consume the Chinese colonialist enterprise.

What will the apologists for Chinese Tibet say when all of their colonialist work has gone to ashes and the snow lion flag is flown freely over its homeland again?

The cracks in the edifice are growing. The walls seem strong now...but they always do just before they shatter and tumble.

Notes from the Pig Trough: Cracks in "Chinese Tibet"

So long as Tibetans remain in the caricatured boxes Western Buddhists and their supporters have placed them into, they will receive moral and material support as individuals, but never as a nation.

In 60 years, the government of China has managed to convince not only its own citizens that Tibet is an inalienable part of China, but also most of the rest of the world.

It is amazing to see a nation like the USA claim to be fighting for freedom in so many other people's countries...yet turn their backs on Tibet. (We'll fight for Iraqi freedom, but ignore Tibet so that Coca Cola can keep selling their shit water to hundreds of millions of Chinese.)

It is amazing that a free and sovereign nation of millions could become invaded and occupied, with its native people pushed aside to make room for the colonial settlers. And all the while, the nation that is doing this very barbarous thing, China, is accepted by the world.

In Tibet, a once proud and free nation, the penalty for disagreeing that Tibet was ever a separate nation is imprisonment and torture. The penalty for even saying the word "rangzen" (freedom) is imprisonment and torture (if you survive being shot at).

The penalty for telling the truth is death.

I am not the Dalai Lama. I can follow His Holiness' Buddhist teachings while dismissing much of the political views he espouses. His Holiness is very wise, but on Tibet, he is wrong on one most salient point: There will never be a middle path for Tibetan freedom, in as much as there will never be a middle way for Buddhists to let go of what makes them suffer. In some things, the "middle path" is an avoidance of reality.

The reality is that China, despite its claims of "Serf Liberation" and of "Sacrificing" for Tibet, is not interested in Tibetans nor does China care about Tibet other than the land it comprises and the resources that go with that. All development in Tibet, including transit networks, urban infrastructure, education, and housing, are all geared towards a settler population consisting of "internal" migrants from south and southwestern China.

The fact that there were no serfs in Tibet on the eve of China's invasion will make your Chinese friends' mouths drop if you mention it. Tibetans, contrary to decades of Chinese mythmaking and racist stereotyping, were not bound to the land nor to "landowners." But Chinese people can be forgiven for seeing Tibetans by the lights of their own experiences, since Chinese people themselves had lived under feudal slavery for generations.

The entire enterprise of Chinese celebration over liberating and modernizing Tibet can be seen in the same way that European colonialists celebrated their triumph over native superstition and cultural lag. The barbarians are not to be trusted to know what they themselves want. Who would ever not want to be a part of China?

So Tibet, as well as its neighbor, East Turkestan, with whom it shares the misfortune of being a nation being colonized by China (in an age when this shit supposedly doesn't happen) gets to be the Chinese man's burden.

The sad fact is that in all of this, neither China nor the Chinese people have ever even bothered to get to know who the Tibetans really are. There has just been the implicit assumption that they "of course must be proto-Chinese, waiting to be taught how to become really Chinese."

Like many colonized peoples' experiences, the Tibetans have to learn the ins and outs of colonialist Chinese culture and occupation/settler society to survive...all the while the Chinese never have to even move an eyebrow to ever learn what any Tibetan may really think about all of this.

The extent of the colonialist project that China has built is so vast that most Chinese people today would consider the very idea of Tibetan independence, whether today or at any moment in history, to be ludicrous.

But THAT is exactly where the cracks in the facade start to show.

The Tibetans have to negotiate their way through the occupation Chinese every day, knowing the colonialist society on even more intimate terms than most of the settler citizens of that society. The Tibetans know exactly where to hit back. When to bide time and be patient, and when to fight back. The Chinese...can only respond from fear. From a position of ignorance...Since they do not know the heart of Tibetans and can only try to impose what they have proclaimed to be Tibetans' heart.

Mao Zedong was wrong when he mentioned that a lie told a hundred times becomes the truth. Mao Zedong was right when he said a single spark can start a prairie fire.

Abraham Lincoln said "How many legs does a dog have if you call its tail a leg?.....

"Four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg."

Calling Tibet a part of China does not make it so. Trying to silence the Tibetans and spin their resistance as "a fight for autonomy within China" does not hide the truth that they are fighting for their complete freedom, even after all these years.

I wonder if the American Patriots could have held out for so long.

You may think that the Rangzen Spring of 2008 was Tibet's last stand, but you have only fooled yourselves.

-Hugh Kunsang

another shot of whiskey...(remembering the Gits)

Winter is the season of either punk or trance techno for me. (There've been a few old jazz winters...but in my head jazz fits into punk.)

Right now it's punk.

At this moment it is the Gits. (http://www.thegits.com/history.html)

I know not many in the world have heard of them.

Back when the whole world was enthralled to any wipe that came from Seattle and Nirvana was being played on MfuckingTV, the Gits were playing and some of that "grunge" hype benefitted them with exposure. (Mind you, I liked Nirvana. And their sudden rocket blast to mainstream popularity shocked me as much as it did everyone else. At the time I thought "wtf? a hardcore band....popular?")

While everyone was listening to Nirvana and Pearl Jam (and in increasing amounts, Soundgarden), the Gits were rocking and kicking out the jams, motherfucker! (MC5 reference for those of you who do not know. Kallisti!)

The Gits rocked the hell out of the Puget Sound area and created an entire music scene around them, until Mia Zapata, their singer, was murdered in the summer of 93. (That murder went unsolved for ten years.) It gives me mixed feelings of outrage and disgust that someone could do that to someone so bright.

They never signed to a major label. They never achieved "Nirvana-like" success. They never needed it. Their energy comes through with every song. And this energy has influenced so many other punk and rock bands since.

If you look them up online, using google or something, you will find references to the murder case, a movie about them, Home Alive (a group that gives women self defense lessons), the fact that Joan Jett played with the surviving members (the band going by "Evil Stig" for the tour), that 7 Year Bitch dedicated an album to Mia called "Viva Zapata!" etc. (7 Year Bitch is another pretty good band.)

These are all good.

But nothing like hearing them. I recommend anyone who likes rock, punk, 80s hardcore, or even music in general, to find the Gits and listen to them.

If you wanted to know what happened to the American hardcore scene of the 80s, it was exemplified by bands like the Gits. You could even say that it WAS the Gits.

Songs like "Another Shot of Whiskey," "Spear and Magic Helmet," and "Wingo Lamo"......damn!