All of our regular readers who remember “Ivan” of the China blogosphere, will enjoy this song by the late Dean and the Weenies, who were punk rock gods/goddesses in the 1980s.
Ivan respectfully asks the departed soul of “Dean”, now in a Heaven of Dean’s choice, to allow Ivan to declare that this song is Ivan’s anthem:
2 April, 2009 at 10:59 am
Yes, well I remember Ivan only all too well. He might jump at the chance I expect, to join his old friend Richard in his latest (totally unprovoked) attack against me over on the Fool’s Mountain blog, at:
http://blog.foolsmountain.com/2009/03/17/cultural-reflections-on-tibet/#comments
2 April, 2009 at 11:16 am
Majestic. Celestial, even.
2 April, 2009 at 12:11 pm
MAJ: The foolsmountain thread seems to point back at a pretty old feud. If I got that right, Richard can’t forgive you for using his full name in public, when you had reason to believe that it was public anyway. Unfortunate, but hardly something to be in anyones dock for, years later.
I’m not really familiar with the matter, but it seems to me that it’s something to react to with a short account of the facts, every time it turns up again, and then leave it there, every time. Can’t see how it should tarnish your name.
2 April, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Justrecently – I agree with your assessment, and your advice is very sound. Cheers!
2 April, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Yeah Mark, just leave it alone. Continuing to argue with Richard about that old feud would be like holding his dick for him while he challenges you to a pissing contest, and that’s something you sure as hell don’t want to do.
You remain welcome to hang out here anytime.
3 April, 2009 at 2:27 am
Thanks Ned!
3 April, 2009 at 4:35 am
I’ll just add that for someone who prides himself on being “fair and balanced”, his use of the phrase “cyber ax murderer” reminds me of how THIS guy fights:
3 April, 2009 at 10:11 am
Mark, I decided it was time to reveal the cosmic truth about you and me and Elvis:
http://underthejacaranda.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/maj-is-everywhere-maj-is-elvis/
3 April, 2009 at 11:49 am
Dear Mark,
You have my sympathy. Richard is totally out of his mind, but that’s nothing new really. The heyday of the Peking Duck has long gone. It’s been a long while since the last time Richard has written anything worth reading. I’m sad to see how he has to resort to spamming the worn-out fantabulist post and re-igniting an old feud with you in order to draw attention to him and his blog. Mark, my advice for you is: take any personal attack from Richard as a compliment, say thanks but no thanks, and stay right clear of his path. Don’t even bother to respond to his provocation, and let him make a fool of himself, as he has already done.
As for the Tibetan issues that you’ve been discussing at the Fool’s Mountain, I regret to say that I don’t quite agree with your point of view. Demonizing the Dalai Lama, undermining the religious commitment of the Tibetan people and trivializing the complexity of the Sino-Tibetan dispute are not the ways to go in resolving the Tibetan issue. All you are doing is reinforcing the political myth-making that has so-far been responsible for polarizing both parties of the dispute, making it impossible for them to come to the negotiable table to work out something sensible. What is needed is a resolution that will fulfill the genuine wishes of the Tibetan people, serve the best interest of the Chinese people and adequately address security concerns of the region. It is for this reason I am hesitant to join the discussion at the Fools Mountain. I don’t believe that posters over there share my respect for the “real history” of Tibet. I don’t need to read any more CCP and Free Tibet propaganda on this topic. I refuse to be brainwashed by either party. Whoever wants to debate this issue with me will have to do it at my terms on this blog. So watch out for my upcoming posts on Tibet and on Wang Lixiong.
3 April, 2009 at 4:06 pm
@C.A. Yeung:
Well said. What are your terms?
4 April, 2009 at 12:53 am
My Laowai, thanks for asking. I will not discuss the Tibetan issue on a platform used by either the CCP or the Free Tibet movement as a way to launch their political contest. I remember Tsering Shakya once wrote: “Today the issue of Tibet’s recent past is hotly contested in the political arena and presented in a crude dialectic. Both the Chinese and the Tibetan authorities have vested interests in reducing the issue to simplistic terms”. Hence we have 2 extreme versions of a story. None of these versions are telling the truth.
So here comes term # 1: respect history
The Dalai Lama is a solution, rather than an obstacle to discussions about the future of Tibet. A solution that involves the DL will be to the best interest of Chinese people as well. It is very dishonest for the CCP to mislead the people of China about this.
So term # 2: no name calling of the DL will be tolerated. I will not discuss Tibetan issue on the same platform as those who call Wang Lixiong (or other Chinese who sympathizes with the Tibetan people) a Hanjian (or traitor of the Han people).
The Sino-Tibetan conflict is an international issue, not China’s internal affairs, because the mishandling of this will affect the well being of a very large portion of the world’s population who is residing in the Asian-Pacific region.
So finally term # 3: I will not participate in any discussion that excludes, discourages or trivializes international participation in this dialogue.
4 April, 2009 at 4:41 am
Dear Catherine,
Thanks for your response.
I appreciate your support where Richard’s recent unprovoked attacks are concerned. I also appeciate your remarks about my stance on the Tibetan Issue, however, I think you perhaps misunderstand my position.
You say, in your comment above, that:
“Demonizing the Dalai Lama, undermining the religious commitment of the Tibetan people and trivializing the complexity of the Sino-Tibetan dispute are not the ways to go in resolving the Tibetan issue.”
I agree with you entirely on this statement, though I don’t think I’m guilty of such demonising and trivialisation.
You go on to say that that I am doing “is reinforcing the political myth-making that has so-far been responsible for polarizing both parties of the dispute, making it impossible for them to come to the negotiable table to work out something sensible. What is needed is a resolution that will fulfill the genuine wishes of the Tibetan people, serve the best interest of the Chinese people and adequately address security concerns of the region.”
I don’t think I’m guilty of this at all. Please go back to the Fool’s Mountain thread in question, and read Comments No.50 and 59. My position I think is far more nuanced than you seem to imagine. In Comment No.50 I made the following point:
….In the world of realpolitik, it is highly unlikely that the Chinese central government in Beijing will ever allow the Tibetan Autonomous Region to exercise full political autonomy so long as it feels that its sovereign claims to the region are under threat from the separatist cause. The divisiveness of the old Tibetan ruling elite, operating from their base in Dharamsala, presents then, the main obstacle to addressing the Tibet Issue in a way that could prove mutually satisfying for both parties. The situation on the ground has changed enormously since the 1950s, when the Seventeen-Point Agreement was signed. The collapse of that agreement – sabotaged as it was by the old elite now residing in Dharamsala – was an opportunity lost. The rising tide of Tibetan nationalism since then has greatly complicated matters, driving the wedge between the two parties even deeper. So deep in fact, that it’s now hard to see a way out.
That said, the Chinese central government in Beijing ALSO needs to move ground a little if it wants to loosen the wedge. As Tsering Shakya argues, from a Tibetan perspective, “one of the biggest grievances is that the Chinese authorities equate any expression of Tibetan identity with separatism. The government seems to think that if it allows any kind of cultural autonomy, it will escalate into demands for secession. This is something the government has to relax. In Tibet, everything from newspapers and magazines to music distribution is kept firmly under control, whereas all over China there are increasing numbers of independent publishing houses. The joke in Tibet is that the Dalai Lama wants ‘one country, two systems’, but what people there want is ‘one country, one system’—they want the more liberal policies that prevail in China also to apply in Tibet.”
For the Chinese to ‘relax’ though, Tibetan nationalists need to first alleviate their Chinese administrators of fear by relaxing their campaigns for independence, both from within and from outside the TAR. Rather than using the language and institutional framework of a hegemonic West, an alternative imagining of political communities – one that allows for the kind of relationship that existed between the two parties prior to the middle of the twentieth century – ought to be at least seriously looked into and considered as a possible way forward. Such was the spirit in fact, to at least some extent at least, of the Seventeen-Point Agreement of 1951….
I restate this line of reasoning again in Comment No.59:
….Both parties need to relax – this is what I actually said – BOTH need to make compromises. I agree with Tsering Shakya that the Chinese need to relax their controls over the Tibetan population in the TAR.
I qualify this though, by grounding my views in the world of realpolitik. Beijing commands a much more powerful presence in the TAR than do the urban Tibetan nationalists, and so one must ask the question: who has the upper hand? The answer is obvious: the Chinese central government does. As I said in the conclusion to my earlier comment above, “for the Chinese to ‘relax’, Tibetan nationalists need to first alleviate their Chinese administrators of fear by relaxing their campaigns for independence, both from within and from outside the TAR.” This is not a conclusion that I just suddenly dream’t up as wish fulfillment. This is the conclusion drawn by a good number of the world’s leading Tibetologists: A. Tom Grunfeld, Barry Sautman, June Teufel Dreyer, Cynthia Beall and Melvyn Goldstein for example, have all reached this very conclusion. Having read close to fifty books on contemporary Tibet, along with numerous journal articles (representing a range of views), I have come to agree with them, as I think their advice on how to overcome the current impasse is at least workable.
As Melvyn Goldstein has pointed out, calls for independence and even for the introduction of a ‘one country, two systems’ approach, are options that Beijing simply finds unacceptable, so they “therefore do not represent a realistic common ground for creating a resolution of the problem.” (see Goldstein, “The Snow Lion and the Dragon”, p.125) “The key question regarding a compromise resolution,” adds Goldstein, is “therefore whether it is possible to create a truly ‘ethnic’ Tibet within the framework Beijing is willing to accept – that is, without changing the underlying [one-party] system [of governance].” Goldstein says he thinks this is possible “if both sides agree to a number of important concessions and work to set aside past hatred and distrust.” (Ibid., p.126)
This will never happen though, so long as Beijing feels that its sovereign claims to the region are under threat from separatists. The first step, given realpolitik, must necessarily be then (as Grunfeld in particular has for a long time now consistently and focefully argued) for the more hard-line Tibetan nationalists (like the Tibetan Youth Organisation for example, which inspires and co-ordinates demonstrations in the TAR from their base in Dharmasala) to give up their separatist cause. The two parties need to work together to solve the problem, which first requires trust-building. As I see it, the TGIE and their radical nationalist youth wings, present the most immediate and therefore serious obstacles to finding a peaceful resolution to the Tibetan situation….
In other words, I recognise the situation as complex, and that both parties have legitimage grievances. Both parties need to make compromises if a solution is to be reached. I really don’t think that I have trivilaised the situation.
That said, I am looking forward to reading your upcoming post on the Tibet Issue, and in engaging in a serious discussion with you on the concerns you raise.
Sincerely yours,
MAJ
P.S. Describing the Dalai Lama as a political chameleon, as I do in one of my later comments on the Fool’s Mountain thread – the most recent thread on that site – is I think a legitimate observation to make. I do, afterall, support my point of view with references to his own widely reported press statements on a variety of issues. To trivialise the views of the Dalai Lama though, does not I think equate to a trivialisation of the Tibetan Issue. My real problem with the Dalai Lama is not that he is a political chameeon though – rather, it is that he exaggerates the extent of human rights abuses in Tibet because he judges that to do so will serve his own political interests. Such a stance provokes, understandably, hostility and suspicion on the part of Chinese hardliners, thereby strengthening their hand. As Professor A. Tom Grunfeld has argued for a long time now, the Dalai Lama is more of an obstacle to peace than anything – he cause more harm to the Tibetan cause than good.
4 April, 2009 at 4:56 am
Catherine – sorry, one more thing. In Comment No.50 (on the Fool’s Mountain thread in question, and which I quoted from in my comment addressed to you above), I wrote:
“The rising tide of Tibetan nationalism since then has greatly complicated matters, driving the wedge between the two parties even deeper. So deep in fact, that it’s now hard to see a way out.”
What I deglected to mention here, but intend to also address in my forthcoming essay on Tibet (to be published on my site later in the month) is that the Han backlash against Tibetan separatist activities and their popular support in the West, has also encouraged the rise of a more extremist and chauvanistic Han nationalism – the rising tide of BOTH Tibetan and Han nationalism now compete to drive that wedge of distrust and anguish between the two parties even deeper.
4 April, 2009 at 5:20 am
P.S again – sorry for all of my careless typing errors above. I’m in a hurry, as I’m about to leave home to meet up wth some friends at a nearby pub! I’ll check back here for a response later tonight (if I’m sober enough) or otherwise tomorrow.
Cheers,
MAJ
4 April, 2009 at 9:39 am
Tom Grunfeld has argued for a long time now, the Dalai Lama is more of an obstacle to peace than anything – he cause more harm to the Tibetan cause than good.
We discussed hegemony some time earlier, MAJ. Do we agree that what Grunfeld says is hegemony, too? Nothing wrong with hegemony – an international discussion about Tibet can adopt arguments from any hegemony, and that’s fine with me. We should just be aware of its role in our discussion.
The Dalai Lama may be an obstacle to peace – but depending on whose definition is applied, maybe many or most Tibetans are obstacle to peace – for wanting him back? And why should I blame them for that?
4 April, 2009 at 10:05 am
A. Tom Grunfeld’s positioning is hardly hegemonic. It’s a view he shares with a number of other prominent Tibetologists, especially the more academic, like Melvyn Goldstein, Barry Sautman, Cynthia Beal and Pamela Logan. But there are almost as many well-known Tibet specialists who disagree, like Robert Thurman (the Hollywood actress Uma Thurman’s father) and Tsering Shakya, of course. The Western media, of course, generally cover the Tibet Issue from the perspective of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile. The views of the pro-Tibetan Exile lobby are the more hegemonic.
5 April, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Dear Mark,
Grunfeld, Goldstein, Sautman, Beal and Logan? Are you serious? They can hardly be called independent researchers.
JR is absolutely spot on when he poses questions about Grunfeld. However I will not describe Grunfeld as hegemonic. Instead, I have serious concern about the integrity of Grunfeld’s work. It seems to me that Grunfeld’s pro-Communist stand and his long term association with the US China People’s Friendship Society (an organisation answerable to CCP’s United Front Work Department) somehow got the better of him. The most dubitable part of Grunfeld is not his political affiliation; it is his scholarship, as reflected in his books The Making of Modern Tibet. To make the very long story short, I find Grunfeld’s selective quotation of Charles Bell’s work very objectionable. He used Bell’s work to support his version of a barbaric and subhuman Tibet prior to the Communist “emancipation”, thereby justifying the subsequent Chinese rule in Tibet as not only necessary but also fundamentally desirable. What he didn’t tell his readers was that Bell’s originally intention was to demonstrate that Tibet was an independent nation, culturally and historically distinct from China.
This observation of mine is shared by a book review published in the 1997 Summer/Autumn China Information. The reviewer writes and I quote: “Another problem with this book, as well as with its predecessor, is the manner in which quotations and references are used. It is virtually impossible to ascertain the context from which the quotation has been lifted, thus the reader is unable to discern the validity of the author’s interpretations. This is particularly important because quotations in this book are used as a basis for making definitive truth-claims ….This text is deceptive in another subtle way as well. Grunfeld’s sympathies for Communism run throughout the text, but are dissipated under a mantle of ‘objective scholarship’. He vituperatively (sic.) exposes the excesses and subterfuge of the Tibetan elite, but coddles the intemperance and duplicity of Chinese Communist leaders, if these are acknowledged at all ….”
I also have a lot to say about Goldstein, as well as other shameless western useful idiots who willingly sacrifice academic integrity for political expedience. Their deceptive way of “grounding their views on the world of realpolitiks” is one of the main reasons why the Sino-Tibetan dispute cannot be resolved. But that’s another story, another post.
Just for now,
Catherine
5 April, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Catherine,
Interesting response! I will investigate further your claims about Grunfeld before commenting. As for Melvyn Goldstein – he happens to be widely recognised as the world’s No.1 leading Tibetologist.
All of the scholars mentioned above are also widely regarded as being independent scholars. The book “Contemporary Tibet”, edited by Barry Sautman and which contains studies by both Goldstein and Grunfeld, as been described by a number of other China/Tibet specialists as the “best” and “most scholarly” book currently available on the Tibet Issue. Professor Colin Mackerras for example, says this.
Best regards,
MAJ
6 April, 2009 at 4:40 am
Dear Catherine,
The review of A. Tom Grunfeld’s book that you quote above was written by the American anthroplogist and human rights activist, Dr. Amy Mountcastle. What’s interesting, is that her essay on the politics of representation of the Tibet Issue is published in the book “Contemporary Tibet”, edited by Professor Barry Sautman. I own a copy. This book also contains essays by Sautman himself, A. Tom Grunfeld and Melvyn Goldstein and Cynthia Beall.
Mountcastle’s attack on Grunfeld, and her criticisms of Sautman, reflect her positioning as a radical activist. In her conclusion to the essay published in the book edited by Sautman, Mountcastle argues that the role of human rights policy “should not be summarily dismissed because of a false dichotomy between ‘real’ politics and social and political ideals. There is an increasing body of evidence,” she claims, “that suggests that internationalised political action through globalised issues such as human rights, environmentalism and women’s issues can be an effective strategy for resistance movements of politically marginalised and disenfranchised groups.”
Scholars like Sautman, Goldstein and Grunfeld are attacked by Mountcastle for calling into question the claims of the Tibean exiles and their supporters, with Mountcastle accusing scholars of employing “rhetorical and discursive strategies that have the resonance of objectivity” in order to “discredit” the exile government’s assertions of human rights violations.”
I think she is being unreasonable here. Many scholars, like Sautman, Grunfeld and Goldstein, base their assessments on what can be verified empirically, both qualitatively and quantitatively. They are right to do so.
The problem for Mountcastle is that the overwhelming weight of evidence simply does not support most of the exile claims. They are right to criticise the TGIE and their supporters for exaggerating, even at times fabricating, the extent and nature of human rights abuses. Amy Mouncastle is a radical activist who, unable to challenge the views of Sautman, et. al. empirically, has instead resorted to criticising the way such key scholars “frame” the issues, arguing that they “cannot be seen as neutral, unbiased or objective.” In her view, the Tibetans in exile are the ones who should rightfully “define” the Tibet Question, not academics, and doing so through the use of human rights discourse is for the exiles a legitimate strategy.
That’s fine in my opinion, so long as they are honest with their claims. But the overwhelming weight of evidence simply doesn’t support most of their assertions. But Mountcastle ignores this problem altogether. “Human rights as a political strategy,” she argues, is a legitimate “means of challenging the overwhelming realist political ideology that restricts access and participation…to de-legitimate the human rights platform and agendas by locating them outside the privileged realm of ‘the real’ is then, a political act.”
In other words, Mountcastle’s criticisms of Grunfeld, Sautman, et.al are politically motivated by her support for the Tibetans in Exile. To hell with what can be empirically-verifiable, with what can be “privileged” as “real”, she argues. Anyone who calls into question the claims of the Tibetans in exile and their supporters must necessarily be politically biased, she asserts, and their pesky empirical facts she says ought to be dismissed as part of a conspiratorial plot to “de-legitimise” the political cause of the Tibetans in Exile – assessments that are empirically based are merely “discursive strategies” cloaked in the rhetorical veil of objectivity as far as she is concerned. Well, how convenient!
I think her arguments are ridiculous, to be frank.
In her review of Grunfeld’s book, she accuses him of having “Communist sympathies”. I don’t think so. Mountcastle is not happy with Grunfeld’s assessments, which often call into question the claims made by the Tibetans in exile and their supporters, so she accuses him of being politically motivated, considering him to be sympathetic to Beijing. She uses the term “Communist” to describe his alleged political allegiance (knowing that “Communism” is widely regarded as a dirty word among her fellow Americans) in order to discredit him. Objectivity is not a quality that Mountcastle believes is possible, as she clearly argues in the essay she had published in the book edited by Sautman. All assessments, no matter how empirically based, are inherently political in her view. This is so ironic, coming from her – as she is very clearly far more politically motivated than any of the scholars she criticises.
Jamyang Norbu’s review of Grunfeld’s book can hardly be taken seriously either, since you have paraphrased him in your comment above when discussing his “selective quotation of Charles Bell’s work.” Norbu is clearly biased and he has grossly misread Grunfeld’s book, accusing him of having a deliberate “design to demonstrate Tibetans as barbaric, subhuman, even bestial” as a way to justify Chinese rule in Tibet “as necessary and civilising.” I have a copy of Grunfeld’s book, which has been very widely praised among serious scholars of Tibet, and he certainly does not have any such crude designs. The charge is again, ridiculous.
Norbu also attacks Grunfeld for having been a member of the “US-China People’s Friendship Society” which he claims is a servant of the Chinese Communist Party. Bollocks! The US-China People’s Friendship Association (not Society) is an American-based educational organisation that was set up in 1974 with the aim of fostering good relations between the two countries. Where is Norbu’s evidence to show that this organisation is a servant of the CCP?
Professor Grunfeld is not a communist either. Apart from teaching at the Empire State College of the State University of New York, he also serves as an advisor on Tibetan issues to the US Government. He also receives research grants from the US Government’s National Endowment for the Humanities as well as from the Ford Foundation, and he is a consultant to BBC TV. Grunfeld also holds memberships in the American Historical Association, the Association for Asian Studies and the Historical Society for Twentieth Century China. What academic qualifications does Jamyang Norbu have? None – though he has had a few books published that present his view of the Tibet Issue. He’s a political activist and writer with an axe to grind, currently living in exile in the United States after having lived for over 40 years in India. He’s hardly an objective voice when critiquing the scholarly works of others then, is he?
Norbu also has a rant against Sautman, Goldstein and Parenti in another piece he wrote, very emotively titled, “Running-Dog Propagandists”.
Professor Goldstein is no ideologically-driven Communist either. He’s a social anthropologist specialising in Tibetan society, history, and contemporary politics, and has conducted research with Tibetans in India, Nepal and since 1985, extensively in the TAR. He has written over 14 books along with almost 100 published articles, and the Case Western University website describes him as being “recognised as one of the world’s leading experts on Tibet.”
When the overwhelming weight of empirically-verifiable evidence, both qualitative and quantitative, simply doesn’t support most of your politically-motivated claims, then how do you respond? How do you keep up the fight?
Answer: you launch a propaganda campaign aimed at smearing the scholars whose research and assessments you don’t like by dismissing them as “Communists”, as being politically biased and motivated, and you dismiss the need to base claims on what can be verified empirically altogether, arguing instead that all assessments are inherently political, that any claims to objectivity are mythical, and that scholars have no moral right to ask questions or to frame issues in ways that you don’t like in the first place – meaning that scholars should not interfere with yuor political objectives by calling into question your claims. They should mind their own bloody business and let us do all the “framing”.
THIS IS HOW ACTIVIST-SCHOLARS LIKE AMY MOUNTCASTLE THINK.
6 April, 2009 at 8:29 am
When it is about control of how stories are told – as scientific as they may come -, I’m thinking of cultural hegemony, rightly or wrongly. Eduard Said with his allegations of Orientalism comes to my mind in this context. I don’t think that every spoken or written line about cultural conflicts is intricated by such concepts, or can be “explained away” by them. But then, when the Dalai Lama is an “obstacle”, he’s no obstacle due to his military, economic or financial power, is he? My point is that if Eduard Said had Tibetan, something else than orientalism would have been his beef – with Beijing, rather than with the West.
Isn’t this a case of hegemony?
6 April, 2009 at 8:30 am
Should be spelled EdWard Said.
6 April, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Justrecently – I take your point about Orientalism. I actually own a copy of Edward Said’s book, “Orientalism” (the Penguin edition), so I’m familiar with his arguments. For Said, Orientalism is really a particular form of ethnocentrism.
But I think that the pro-Tibetan exile lobby in the West are generally more guilty of developing an Orientalist approach to understanding the Tibet issue than are any of the Tibet scholars that I have mentioned above: Sautman, Grundfelf, Goldstein, Beall, etc., who to some considerable extent, have tried to de-mystify Tibet.
6 April, 2009 at 4:34 pm
MAJ, I’m either an agnostic or an atheist (I’m not trying to define my mind more accurately). That doesn’t mean that ethics would be irrelevant to me, but for me, guilt is no category in this debate. Maybe responsibility or things that I owe to others and myself are.
I think I’m rather trying to achieve accuracy, than avoiding guilt. As for the Dalai Lama and his supporters, I’m aware that they are running propaganda of their own. But propaganda is nothing unnormal, from whichever side involved. I’d just think that end users like me, or scientists who are working on these issues, should only be in the business of getting more light into obscured matters. Then again, the mere fact that the Dalai Lama opposes the way Tibet is ruled, or makes varying demands which Beijing finds unacceptable, doesn’t make me believe that he is a particular obstacle. China wanted Tibet – and you can’t have Tibet without the Dalai Lama. Not in the hearts and minds of many Tibetans, anyway. No valid point?
6 April, 2009 at 4:38 pm
P.S.: above (#23), I’m referring to the orientalism within the exiled groups which work to mobilize the public outside China as propaganda.
7 April, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Here is Ivan’s very “Zen” response and contribution to the above debate about Tibet:
8 April, 2009 at 5:27 am
OK. Who’s Turandot? The Dalai Lama or Hu Jintao?
8 April, 2009 at 6:42 am
JR,
It’s a koan. You’re asking the wrong question.
8 April, 2009 at 11:36 am
aha.
31 May, 2009 at 10:52 am
[...] by C.A. Yeung on 31 May, 2009 A while ago, I had a disagreement with Mark Anthony Jones, one of our regular commenters, over the issue of so-called “independent” ”verifiable” [...]