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!