What is with all this?

I realize I have posted quite much lately about Tibet, or touching on it.

And if you read this blog through, it would seem like either "Tibet" or the undead cannibals we know of as "zombies."

There is much more to what I do and write, but I am not interested in spewing all about it, and neither would you be interested in reading such muck, if you are honest.

So if it, for now, appears to be Tibet. So be it. Or Zed Heads, oh well. This whole "blog" on its own thing is new to me, after years of myspace blogging.

Those of you who may be here because you heard about me as a Pagan, or involved with Wicca, may be put off by my Buddhist jots and tittles here, and the fact that I may not mention my own Paganism a lot. However, you should know that I never, outside a brief couple years in the early 2000s, considered those parts of my life public anyway. So even though I may post something Paganish or Wiccan here and there, I won't be making a fuss about it.

As for my interest in the Tibetan resistance...well...just think about it. A nation as old as "China" getting conquered by "China" and now China tells everyone that this nation (Tibet) was always Chinese, in fact....the Chinese never invaded Tibet...no...they liberated their own brothers. Nice! I bet the Nazis thought the same way about the Polish.

And if you don't like that I support Tibetans in their resistance, even if they use violence, I am not sorry for your blindness. I abhor violence, but this abhorrence will not make me flinch from supporting what I know is right. The greatest weapon of the fascists is their tolerance of pacifists. And pacifism against an aggressor who will only see it as an excuse to slaughter you is an irresponsible stance to take.

As for Zombies....

Well....I like to write and I like zombie films and stories....more so for the apocalyptic feel than anything else....so I have written some stuff of my own...which will be posted here.

That's all. I am not the one for writing a lot of self reflective posts...so...enjoy this one.

Notes from the Pig Trough

A UK national, Akmal Shaikh, convicted in China of heroin smuggling was executed today.

British PM Gordon Brown condemned the execution. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband expressed regret that the UK's concerns regarding the case were not taken into Consideration by China.

The People's Republic of China Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, said something particularly PRC-like in her response: "Nobody has the right to speak ill of China's judicial sovereignty. We express our strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the British Government's unreasonable criticism of the case. We urge the British to correct their mistake in order to avoid harming China-UK relations."

Much as China likes to try to pressure world leaders into ignoring the Dalai Lama and Tibet. You may read this and think "so what? China can't control what people around the world think." But you ignore the fact that the People's Republic of China, with regards to Tibet, has had a strategy of co-opting the world wide academia for the past several years, to the point where once sympathetic western scholars now speak and write about how wonderful Tibetans' lives are under Chinese rule.

Much as how China has managed to pressure and cajole nations around the world to recognize Chinese sovereignty over Tibet (and then turns around and tries to claim that no nation has ever recognized even a country known as "Tibet"). When was the last time you heard an American president (great "promoters of freedom" that they are) speak out about the fundamental human right of Tibetans to be free of foreign oppression? When was the last time you heard any European leader speak about Tibet truthfully...i.e. not as an internal Chinese matter, but as a matter of one nation occupying and colonizing another?

It is conceivable that China, since it spares no expense with regards to controlling not only Tibet, but how people around the world think about Tibet, feels it can also control world opinion about how it treats people, such as Akmal Shaikh.

The basic line of argument from the PRC side is that one doesn't even have the right to argue with what China does. One has no right to complain. Especially if you are not Chinese.

While I certainly agree that if one commits a crime one is liable to the local authorities for justice, I disagree with the principle that nobody can say some nation's judicial system is a crock of shit. Criticism is healthy. If China's judicial system had its ducks in a row, why then did they not seek a mental health evaluation for Mr Shaikh? Is it that it is more important to deal out justice or punishment, then it is to honor justice?

China can respond by saying that they are sovereign and had no need to seek out a mental evaluation since they already received British documentation about Akmal Shaikh but no mental illness was diagnosed in any record anywhere.

But this ignores the fact the justice should spare no expense in pursuit of the idea "innocent until proven guilty." This may be an American and Western idea, but China should not refuse it on those grounds, since the PRC itself is officially "communist" and Communism is lock-stock-and-barrel a Western tradition of anti-capitalist ideology.

So we are not to criticize China's judicial system and its handling of the Akmal Shaikh case. Nor its treatment of Tibet. Nor its colonization of East Turkestan. Nor its wanton destruction of the environment. Nor its official system of apartheid between those from agricultural communities and those from the coastal cities. Yep. World power indeed. And the ego to match.

Spinning with the spinny people: Tibet

When the Rangzen Spring hit (in March of 2008), I was informed by many people in the "buddhist" community that my outspoken behavior was "samsaric" and not spiritual. For those of you who aren't buddha-nerds or not even Buddhists (unlike me who is one) "samsaric" means I am too focused on this world, as opposed to some buddha-nerd's conception of nirvana. (Sorry, but in Buddhism, nirvana is either here and now, or it simply fucking isn't at all. I realized I have just popped a whole lotta people's bubbles about the so-called Buddhist spiritual quest and all....as if I give a crap about their delusions.)

It got to the point where certain Buddhists quoted New Age truisms to me, claiming that they were Buddhist teachings..all in an attempt to get me to give up my unflinching support for Tibetan Independence. (Yeah, that's right. Independence. As in fully free from China. Nope. Not some stupid fucking "autonomous zone" like the Beijing spags describe it today...but full independence, as is the Tibetan birthright.) I was called "worldly." As if this would sway me.

Now....

What some of those dumb asses never realized is that I have been doing the Buddhist practice thing for a while. And I actually practice it. I mean I really do sit there on the floor for long periods of time. I also not only practice meditation, but I practice the precepts. One of which, in the lineage of Buddhism I follow mostly (as opposed to some others which I am also part of but can't seem to be bothered to remember) is to defend oppressed people...not because it is a religious rule nor because it would make me a better person or any of that stupidity, but simply because I see a wrong being done and I yearn for it to be right. I feel the pain of other beings. Just like I seek to help my own arm if wounded, so other people's pains.

What hit me most about the whole episode was that people were telling me how upset or disillusioned they were with Tibetans, because Tibetans were throwing rocks at police and setting fires to Chinese-owned shops. My question to them was "why do you think Tibetans aren't living on the earth?"

The idea many in the West have of Tibetans is some willy nilly spiritual fantasy that has nothing to do with either Tibet or Buddhism. For instance, in Tibet today, a Tibetan concerned with their own survival may see it necessary to throw a rock through a Chinese bank window (thus reinforcing the idea to Chinese colonists that they can never be safe while in Tibet). I do not understand why so many so called spiritual people in the West would begrudge the Tibetans this resistance. Is it because it makes the Tibetans a real people with real concerns, and not anything like the elves from Tolkien?

The New Age has done a lot to hijack the Tibetan struggle, at least in the minds of Westerners. It's not enough that the New Age gets Buddhism wrong almost every time some dumb assed new age crystal wearing goo goo muck decides to speak about karma. No. Now they have to judge the Tibetans as being wrong for standing up to an aggression that almost makes the Third Reich seem tame.

I once asked some pacifist puke what they thought of Tibetans standing up for themselves by either getting firearms or by destroying the colonists' property. That person actually told me that since Tibetans were being violent, their cause lost its legitimacy.

WTF?

How is it that because an oppressed people will not do what you want them to do, they suddenly become undeserving of freedom?

This may shock the new agers a bit, but Tibetan resistance to China has been largely militant and violent for the past 6 decades, Dalai Lama notwithstanding. While Buddhists seek to avoid killing, there is nothing which says you cannot defend yourself or your loved ones from aggression. There is nothing in Tibetan Buddhism that says "roll over and pacify yourself into playing Chinese."

Tibet was around long before either Tang China, or European peacenik ideas about what constitutes morality. It was a nation and has been on its own for centuries. The Tibetan Empire was vaster than Tang China (despite what today's Chinese nationalists would like to think.)

It is stupid and spinny for another Buddhist to tell me that my support for Tibetan Independence is too caught up in the samsaric world. There is really no other world. And anyone who tries to dissuade me from a truth (Tibet) by claiming I am samsaric, is simply being a fuckwit.

Vomiting China's Lies

Nowadays, reading articles and scholarly works about Tibet, one gets the impression that Tibet is an "ethnic" region as opposed to a nation of its own. This is further supported by the idiotic declarations from the current Tibetan Government in Exile, which claim that Tibet is only an internal affair of the People's Republic of China.

Wow. How far the mighty have fallen. I used to respect the Tibetan Government in Exile, until I realized it had no spine. (The aftermath of the Rangzen Spring of 2008 should have clued anyone in to this fact.) I wonder if the Tibetan Government in Exile has realized the implications of their statements. I mean, since the whole affair is an internal PRC issue, then why in the living fuck does the exile government continue to exist? Silly idiots.

One of the worst absurdities of the whole affair is the attitude now being peddled by China and her supporting scholars that Tibet has been a part of China since "since human activity began." It is no longer good enough to claim Tibet was incorporated into China by the Yuan Dynasty more than 700 years ago (and the Yuan Dynasty is really the name for the period when China itself was under the Mongolian Empire, no matter what today's fenqing like to claim). China is now claiming that the Tibetan imperial dynasty of Lha Tsenpo is really a "coexisting dynasty within China, next to the Tang" much as how in many periods of Chinese history, several warring kingdoms coexisted within the sinosphere. It sounds so nice.

Unfortunately it is complete and utter bull shit.

According to Tang dynasty records, Tibet was a foreign and "barbarian" competitor which had superior metallurgy and weaponry. Tang China and the Tibetan Empire locked horns many times over the lands which until very recently were considered inviolate frontiers between China and Tibet.

I suppose the modern day running dogs of Beijing (and this includes some of the western scholars as much as it does the chinese supporters of the illegal atrocity Tibet has had to endure now for the past 6 decades) think that since Mao said truth is malleable, then all they need do is change the truth to their liking. And they have the wealth and the means to do so, since not many in the world could give a rats ass about a piss poor mountain nation, unless we count those who donate money to Buddhist teachers (so long as they remain spiritual first and Tibetan last).

As many more articles and editorials are written about Tibet and Tibetans since the Rangzen Spring of 2008, it appears that there is a carefully crafted avoidance of the fact that Tibetans inside of Tibet for the most part are striving for complete independence from China, not "autonomy" as is often repeated by the idiot pencil pusher journalists we have here in the West who call themselves "leftists" or "progressives." I guess since the Dalai Lama supports Chinese rule over an "autonomous" Tibet now, this means everyone else should check their brains at the door to this issue.

I guess it means that the cries of RANGZEN (freedom) from the Tibetans living inside of Tibet will continue to be silenced, or mistranslated...so as not to piss off the Beijing government. It is sickening, how many times you can clearly hear in footage of Tibetan protesters the word "rangzen" and yet have some commentator explain that Tibetans want merely their fair share under the PRC. Nice. It is like living in 1984.

Rangzen has become the new word to avoid. It is an obscene word. The Tibetan Government in Exile hates it. The western running dogs of Beijing continue to spin it or downplay it. Or to say that anyone who wishes for the complete independence of Tibet is unrealistic. As for the Chinese, at least they are being honest to themselves. They can't even imagine the idea that Tibet was ever a nation of its own now. And this is the view they are demanding everyone else in the world take. The world doesn't seem to mind either.

It is amazing, really. Months and months ago I warned that China would rewrite the ancient history of Tibet and force every else to accept it. Now that this is happening, I am hearing not a peep of protest from anyone but the Tibetan Rangzen supporters. No one else in our great western democratic countries seems to give a shit.

They may get away with it. Or..rather...it may seem to them and their smug supporters that they are getting away with it. But, the simple truth is still the truth. No disguise can deface evil.

The End Is Nigh Means Nothing (part three)

I promise that this won't turn into a simple dumping ground for the ongoing "End is Nigh Means Nothing" story.......Or at least that's what I tell myself.

(interlude)

I hadn't any memory of how long it was since it happened.

You see, I was driving along the highway, listening to my iPOD blasting its 80s hardcore when it happened. When it HAPPENED. I saw a woman in the middle of my path and I swerved to avoid her. CRASH

Red and black and slivers of white.

I eventually woke up. I was sitting there, the airbag that had stopped my face from hitting the windshield now drained, wheezing. I righted myself and realized I was the source of the wheezing.

I slowly moved my limbs to check, in that post-accident sort of way. Nothing seemed bad, but my head and chest hurt.

Immediately, I remembered the night and what I was doing out here, so I reached for the gun, still under my seat where i had left it. It felt good to have this weapon in my hands.

I thought about the shuffling dead and what they would do to me once they found me out here, my car bashed against a tree. But i had no chance for that. As soon as I grabbed the gun and raised it, I saw a bright light overhead and heard a loud rumble. I passed out then.

When I awoke I was in some camp, where people walked around with guns of all sorts on them. I had no idea where I was or how I had gotten there, but they were living and talking.

One of them saw I was awake and went "Hey, snotface, get up!"

I had no idea, but I slowly pulled myself up to stand.

I was still reeling from everything and trying to catch a second to make sense, when the man came over to me and slapped the side of my head. THAT snapped me more awake then I had been in the last few days.

"Now, listen, and listen good" he went on "We need every last breathing fuck and here you are." He reached down and pushed something against my chest. I grabbed it and realized it was my gun.

I mumbled something then, but I cannot remember what, and the other man just looked at me and snarled, "Shoot for the head. We are outnumbered here by these gutbuckets and if they get in, shoot their heads. It seems to stop them."

I had not idea what was going on or what he was talking about, dizzy as I was. So I just stood there with what was probably a stupid look on my face.

He looked at me closer then, and I looked at him. Grizzled and exhausted, I could see it in his eyes. Like if he went to sleep at that moment, he would never wake up. Fear had been gnawing at him. And I suddenly remembered what was going on.

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.