Rofl, you say 1720-1905 is a particular "moment" .... That's a longer period in time than it has taken for the americans (and canadians) to almost eradicate the natives in north america ...

Try explaing your position on independence for tibet if you indeed have one. Your'e the joke ...

Not finding countries who recognize Tibet is hardly a shock.  Typically nations choose to bestow such recognition when the continued existence of that nation is likely and the war of independence nearly won.  They don't want egg on their face for that completely backing a loser.

Do you have any proof for your "terrorist" assertions or are you just borrowing the terminology of the CCP?

Ethnography of the sort Harrer produced seems odd for one who(as you insinuate) still believed in Nazism.

Tibetans resisted their imperial masters prior to the CIA or the US assistance, so to the extent that it supported a legitimate movement for self determination with violence against the Chinese government/military and not its population generally I'd say it was.  I don't claim to be an expect on the history of the insurgency, so I can't say much more than that.

Resistance in Tibet's case included armed revolt before America's policy makers of the time had so much as heard of the place, but thanks for the list of toothless kooks and real estate scam artists (see Hawai'i) anyhow. Such slavish adherence to the CCP's vocabulary too.   Are you sure your name is accurate?   

Don't make me out to be some gung-ho defender of American hegemony around the world.  I opposed our adventure in Iraq and hold serious doubts if not outright contempt about a number of our Cold War actions including, to cite some examples, our support for the Shah of Iran in the 50s, our Cold War support for Mobutu, and a goodly number of our meddlesome actions in Central America.  Hell, I don't even think we've got any business helping the current government of Columbia.  Clearly you've got me confused with someone else. 

Just because a few Tibetan careerists decide to ally themselves with the dictatorship in no way makes their administration representative or legitimate. I agree that there is very little "communism" left in the "Communist Party" in China; it has evolved into what is now purely an instrument of control for the ruling class.

The "public persona" that Chinese people are forced to show in public to preserve their own lives and livelihoods is a mirage--the "private persona" of Chinese citizens is very different; well aware of the constant abuses by the party members. They are afraid to voice any criticisms of the regime--so don't be fooled by this apparent "unanimity of opinion". It's not that people in China don't want or care about political reform, they just want to save their own skins and they don't want to get mixed up in some insane government political campaign or power struggle in the party--which is what "politics" means to most people there, and when asked by the dictatorship to show support for this or that campaign against some new supposed enemy, they will shout the approved slogans or run a considerable risk by not doing so. 

I lived in China for six years, and I think most people in the West are very uninformed about the abuses of the party members towards their own people. Here's an example; I had a friend who was assaulted by a co-worker (he had pointed out the co-worker's failure to do their job- a "sales manager" with zero sales) who was a party member. The whole incident was caught on a security-camera video which my friend obtained from the building managers and gave to the Public Security Bureau (Police), and he was told to attend at the PSB office a couple of days later. He asked me to join him as he felt more comfortable with a foreigner present. The PSB told him that "there was no video" and that his complaint had no basis, and if he persisted in it he would be jailed for "disturbing public order". The party member smirked and laughed in his face, and left the station--where my friend was subjected to a lecture on his "questionable loyalty" by the police, and warned that he would be watched from then on.

I have also heard two stories of rapes that were treated in a similar fashion, and doubtless there are murders as well. You have to have an understanding of how the party abuses and terrorizes the citizenry like some kind of "master race" to really understand what is going on in China. The Han Chinese are too terrified to speak out, and for good reason.  The Tibetans are not so afraid---and so supporting their struggle is also acknowledging the abuses that the Han Chinese suffer under that obscene dictatorship hiding under a junked political ideology.

Hee Hee! I don't really care what a lickspittle "useful idiot" like you believes!

Central Government is the central problem. None of this would be happening if the country had a legitimate government.

Europe your childish insistence on boxing the argument into the smallest definition you can muster gets weaker every day. You're trying to do the same thing with Canadian bob that you tried with me. My "claims" were centered on the Chinese government and it's abuses and methodologies, which in turn create sympathy for Tibet independence. You come charging on here with the laughable approach of "legitimate claims" -- trying to make it sound like China has the only legitimacy there when really what you're doing is using the obscure "right of conquest" argument for legitimacy from centuries ago which couldn't possibly be more legitimate than wanting to take it back by conquest or protest.

As you bumble around trying to draw metaphors between American Natives and Tibet all you end up doing is accentuating the difference: Natives, at the end of the day, apparently just don't feel as strongly about it as Tibetans and this speaks to the difference in social approach and governing that was my only point all along.

Tibet's claims for independence have as much legitimacy as anyone wants to put on it for any number of reasons. Your weak and brittle claim that "once China took them over...and then did it again in the 50's" is cracking more every day.



Ahk