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

The End Is Nigh Means Nothing (part two)

(The story continues)

Hundreds of miles away, Frank Jensen was well aware of the threat. Two days before, he had gathered hundreds of the Buddhist practitioners who were members of his meditation center. They had all met up at the center's retreat grounds for a marathon chanting session. He wasn't a naive person in the least, his years of practice with Buddhism had prevented any naivety but one. The fatal one he had, up until then, thought with all of his life could stem the rising tide of destruction.

The meditators had gathered in rows, this time facing away from him, while he sat on a dais and conducted the chanting. OM MANI PADME HUM over and over and over. The entire group of hundreds, just shy of a thousand, sitting there on cushions, in row after row, facing the coming swarm. They were all caught up in the idea that the power of their combined chanting and positive energy would break the violence of the coming hordes. But the undead could not be reasoned with, nor would compassion or positive vibrations do anything to them. Jensen realized this truth too late. He only wished some of the others had managed to escape in the ensuing chaos.

As the approaching horde came closer, he could sense the fear among many of those gathered. OM MANI PADME HUM OM MANI PADME HUM over and over as the swarm shambled closer. There were runners among the horde, Jensen knew this well, but there was no need for the runners to run with such an easy collection of snacks just sitting there almost as if in offering.

When the first disheveled and half unclothed wretches came upon the first row of chanters, there was no pause, just lunging, flesh tearing and blood spurting, screaming and moaning. The ever present moan of the undead.

The swarm kept coming. Within seconds, the chanting had broken off and most of the chanters were either on their feet running for their lives or struggling as the undead crowded over them, attacking, tearing and biting. Those that ran fared no better than those few brave or stupid souls who remained resolute on their cushions until their end.

Jensen bolted upright and ran off the dais and kept running. The swarm, distracted by the hundreds of fresh bodies, took little notice of him as he retreated into the nearby woods and ran for his life.

Jensen didn't remember how he ended up in his parents' home, nor how long he had been running, nor whether he had in fact stolen that car or just dreamed of it. But here he was. Two days after the massacre, still in his monk's robes, with a pair of jeans on underneath, his dad's old assault rifle slung over his shoulder, and a pack of canned food pulling on his shoulders. Jensen waited. Peering through the curtains of the living room window. The smell of smoke in the air while the occasional gunshot rang out from somewhere close by.

His parents had obviously fled in a hurry. Or they had been forcefully evacuated by the national guard, which he knew had rolled into various suburbs and herded everyone living that could be found onto the streets and ordered them to evacuate by any means necessary. There was supposed to be a rescue station, Fort Varick, a hundred miles away. Jensen imagined a bunch of scared weekend warriors defending a base crowded with thousands of refugees. He didn't want to think how many of those undead would be there, rushing at the soldiers. He didn't want to imagine any longer because he knew how that scene would end. There were just too many of the damned things now.

He could see a few more of the things wandering around outside. Not in any swarm. Just the occasional shambler. The runners had by now gone after more mobile prey. Unless some were around waiting for any sudden movements. There were surely more victims to be found, in basements or upstairs bedrooms and attics. He could hear banging and glass shattering, and the occasional muffled scream. And the ever present moaning of the undead, when prey was sensed.

He would also be prey. But so far as he knew, he was undetected and meant to stay that way. His only goal now was to find a way to escape into the country side, to somehow get past the streaming refugees and the certain undead swarms that would be on their heels. Yesterday, before the TV stations stopped broadcasting live, he saw such things from the birdseye perspective of a news chopper flying above a highway crowded with refugees on foot and in cars, as the undead swarms moved in closer, capturing and gnawing on the rear of the mass of people trying to flee to anywhere else. Up the highway, one way. From the chopper's perspective you could see that the mass of refugees stretched along for miles, and behind them, the mass of undead was also stretching for miles. From east and west of the highway, across fields, a few undead groups were running and shambling towards the highway, almost as if they were flanking off the living.

He shook his head. He would avoid the highways. And any where else he thought would have been packed with refugees. No. Survivors. Or survivors up until recently.

One of the last live broadcasts was the president declaring martial law by executive order. The quarantine zones had been breached and the only safe areas now would be the so called rescue stations set up by the military, for any survivors to try to reach. Teams of special forces would be deployed via helicopter back into the cities, to search for survivors and destroy any of the undead found. However, he wondered how much good such missions would bring. Any survivors still trapped in cities would surely either be undead themselves now, or torn to shreds so that even the infection or whatever in the hell it was wouldn't matter.

Jensen wondered to himself how the rescue stations would screen out infected refugees/survivors. Would they separate the bitten from the merely wounded? And how would they know who among the wounded had come into contact with fluids from either the infected or the actual undead? Would they even know before it was too late? And how many would figure it out in time? What would happen? Would those with weapons simply kill off the infected or those who could be infected? Were they going to strip thousands of terrified refugees for inspection?

Clusterfuck. That was the word that came to Jensen's mind. The absolute breakdown of every known part of the social contract. He shook away such cynicism since he had no luxury to think such thoughts when his own near future was in doubt.

Jensen felt ashamed for what had happened not only to his group of chanters but also the masses on the highways. He promised himself that he would allow himself to cry should he ever make it far enough away. But first he had to get away. Now was not the time for guilt or any emotion but that which would lead him far away.