[Buddha-l] Re: Re: The Dalai Lama on Self-Loathing (Stuart Lachs)

[jkirk]

This discussion/account is not written from the Tibetans' point of view. 
For a Tibetan-oriented viewpoint about the Kham rebels and CIA intervention,
see for ex. this link:
http://www.chushigangdruk.org/news/news19990419.html published in Newseek
International, April 19, 1999.

Accusing the Dalai Lama of some kind of bad faith for partly working with
the CIA is fatuous in the extreme, considering that the CIA in the late
1950s offered to try to help the Tibetans, by arming and training Khampas as
a force that could fight the Chinese invasion of Tibet. Having started to
help them, the CIA later abandoned them. Your sources keep referring to "the
Tibetans" being trained by the CIA. It was Khampas from eastern Tibet that
were being trained, not just any Tibetans.
Whatever finances the CIA funneled to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan exiles,
the USA and their agency the CIA were fighting the cold war "against
communism." That means in this case against the Chinese revolution and the
Chinese communists of that era. This was US policy. I doubt if they gave a
damn about HHDL once they decided that there was no way the Khampas could
turn things around. Can HHDL and other exiled Tibetans be blamed for
thinking that the USA might help them to regain Tibet? To imply, as your
post here does via citations to Lopez and others, that those of us who
support the Free Tibet movement and HHDL are a bunch of "Shangri-la" types,
is insulting and deeply erroneous. 

The Chinese communist occupation of Tibet was also a calamity not just for
the elites, as Parenti would have it, but also for ordinary Tibetans unable
to flee into exile. Their country has been overrun with ethnic Chinese
immigrants, who today outnumber the Tibetans. Most of the businesses are
owned by Chinese, whose political agents discriminate against Tibetans who
wish to maintain whatever is left of their culture and their language. There
is much more but no room to go into it all here. 

There is a plethora of literature on this political issue. Various denizens
of this list have had our say, one way or the other.
I suggest that it is time to stop the thread, which could go on endlessly. I
hope not on this list. We need to agree to disagree. If some of us want to
argue about this issue endlessly, there are no doubt other lists where it
might be appropriate.

Joanna Kirkpatrick, PhD, UCB 1970
Social and Cultural Anthropologist

(I attach my degree title here, although not regularly, since my impression
is that some on this list think I'm just another opinionated list member.
Actually, I am an opinionated anthropologist, whose opinions are based on
more than gossip and hearsay.)
 


========================
Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Re: Re: The Dalai Lama on Self-Loathing (Stuart
Lachs)

Stephen Hodge wrote
 "This article about their [Stuart and Roma Gelder] latter-day successor,
Parenti, also contextualizes  the Gelders."
The article "A Lie Repeated: The Far Left's Flawed History of Tibet"
 by Joshua Michael Schrei

can be reached at

 http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/downloads/A%20Lie%20Repeated.doc .

Thanks for the article on the background of the Gelders and in addtition on
Anna Louise Strong and A. Tom Grunfeld. I do however take issue with
Schrei's portrayal of Michael Parenti. My guess is that Schrei is
particularly bothered by Parenti's article "Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet
Myth"  which can be accessed at http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html .

I have quite a different take on the article than Schrei. I hope people read
Paenti's article, which is fairly short, rather than only reading Schrei's
comments on the article.

I would like to make some points in the hope of  interesting people in
reading  Parenti's paper.

(  ) in the quoted paragraphs below refer to Parenti's footnotes which I
give as F.N.  after the paragraph.

Tibet like any country has a complicated history as does the Dalai Lama and
his previous incarnations. The Dalai Lama besides being a religious leader
is also a political leader, which by any measure,  is a complicated juggling
act. Though I think the present D.L. is a wonderful and inspiring leader he
gets into "compromised " positions. Parenti points out,

"In 1995, the News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina, carried a
frontpage color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced by the
reactionary Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the headline "Buddhist
Captivates Hero of Religious Right."(39) In April 1999, along with Margaret
Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the first George Bush, the Dalai Lama
called upon the British government to release Augusto Pinochet, the former
fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who had been apprehended
while visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to
go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

F.N. 39 News & Observer, 6 September 1995, cited in Lopez, Prisoners of
Shangri-La, 3.

Lopez comments that his book [Prisoners of Shangi-La] "attempts to
understand how this is possible." He then adds, "Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism
have long been objects of Western fantasy."

Parenti also touches on the Dala Lama / CIA connection:

For the rich lamas and lords, the Communist intervention was a calamity.


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