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Yeah, lets get back to a repressive theocracy feudal state!

http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

Sigh.

Here we are discussing comments by Google's CEO (that only criminals worry about privacy) that are ideologically native to the Chinese "communist" dictatorship and a fan of said regime gets modded "informative" for further propagating that regime's twisted political indoctrination...

In his essay "A Lie Repeated - The Far Left's Flawed History of Tibet" Josh Schrei, among others, has thoroughly debunked the Maoist propaganda behind these useful Western Marxist idiots' like Parenti's excuses for the brutal colonial genocide of China's peaceful neighbouring state Tibet in the name of "liberation" (and annexation).

Of course any documents challenging the Chinese Communist Party's make-believe rewritten "history" are absolutely banned under their rule. Must have One Truth for the One Volk under One Reich Rule.

So, any country with some local abuse of power (ie. all the countries that ever existed) simply deserve to be invaded, annexed and kept under repressive martial rule by the likes of Mao, Stalin and their successors until the colonized peoples' unique national identities, natural resources, cultural heritage and art, languages, religious traditions, any decree of national self-determination etc. (in Tibet's case all of the above) are irrevocably extinguished?

Interestingly, the Tibetan exile government you're referring to as "a repressive theocracy feudal state" is democratically elected while the colonial military dictatorship of the CCP occupying Tibet, besides perpetrating genocide against the completely non-Chinese people of Tibet, is also operating the most unequal distribution of wealth in China's entire history.

Oh, look, it's the Michael Parenti article.

Funny how everyone who wants to make these assertions about Tibet trots out only this article -- which isn't peer reviewed, and is full of assertions that I'm not convinced he can back up. It's certainly written with a lot of innuendo and inference which I don't think is befitting of scholarly work.

His article has been excellently refuted here.

"A lie repeated a hundred times becomes the truth."
-Chairman Mao

You seem to have a very strong agenda to further the Chinese position on this matter. You'll forgive me if I'm underwhelmed with your tired rhetoric.

Do I seriously believe that Tibet was a perfect Shangri La before the chinese invasion? No. Do I believe that the entire country was a series of atrocities as detailed in the article? Absolutely not. Does this article make me have second thoughts about the sincerity and morality of the Dalai Lama? Not on your fucking life.

Cheers

"Free Tibet" is about Tibetans ruling themselves. Nothing more, nothing less.

Before the Chinese they were a feudal theocracy... in reading this .. http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html it doesn't sound very "free" ... to many movies of smiling peaceful monks, I reckon.

Ahhh Parenti! The leftist history scholar who never went to Tibet or spoke to Tibetans and who speaks neither Tibetan nor Chinese... Ask him what he thinks about China's swerve from communism to fascism.

A Lie Repeated - The Far Left's Flawed History of Tibet

China's Favorite Propaganda on Tibet ...and Why It's Wrong

These articles are under the Fact vs. Myth category alongside CCP propaganda so people can evaluate both sides on merit. The CCP only allows you to see their highly revised version of reality, wonder why is that?

Do you reckon the Tibetans are smiling now, behind the great wall of Chinese PLA and PAP troops?

After reading and hopefully understanding the above-mentioned articles, it would be nice to hear if you gained any understanding for the Tibetans' struggle for national self-determination.

"Free Tibet" is about Tibetans ruling themselves. Nothing more, nothing less.

Before the Chinese they were a feudal theocracy... in reading this .. http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html it doesn't sound very "free" ... to many movies of smiling peaceful monks, I reckon.

Ahhh Parenti! The leftist history scholar who never went to Tibet or spoke to Tibetans and who speaks neither Tibetan nor Chinese... Ask him what he thinks about China's swerve from communism to fascism.

A Lie Repeated - The Far Left's Flawed History of Tibet

China's Favorite Propaganda on Tibet ...and Why It's Wrong

These articles are under the Fact vs. Myth category alongside CCP propaganda so people can evaluate both sides on merit. The CCP only allows you to see their highly revised version of reality, wonder why is that?

Do you reckon the Tibetans are smiling now, behind the great wall of Chinese PLA and PAP troops?

After reading and hopefully understanding the above-mentioned articles, it would be nice to hear if you gained any understanding for the Tibetans' struggle for national self-determination.

"Free Tibet" is about Tibetans ruling themselves. Nothing more, nothing less.

Before the Chinese they were a feudal theocracy... in reading this .. http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html it doesn't sound very "free" ... to many movies of smiling peaceful monks, I reckon.

Ahhh Parenti! The leftist history scholar who never went to Tibet or spoke to Tibetans and who speaks neither Tibetan nor Chinese... Ask him what he thinks about China's swerve from communism to fascism.

A Lie Repeated - The Far Left's Flawed History of Tibet

China's Favorite Propaganda on Tibet ...and Why It's Wrong

These articles are under the Fact vs. Myth category alongside CCP propaganda so people can evaluate both sides on merit. The CCP only allows you to see their highly revised version of reality, wonder why is that?

Do you reckon the Tibetans are smiling now, behind the great wall of Chinese PLA and PAP troops?

After reading and hopefully understanding the above-mentioned articles, it would be nice to hear if you gained any understanding for the Tibetans' struggle for national self-determination.

The core problem with Parenti's position is that it is simply at odds with the statements, testimony, and shared history of the Tibetan people themselves - the people Parenti is supposedly defending. The view of Tibet that Parenti ascribes to has been commonly put forward by Chinese government officials - particularly the ones in the ministry of propaganda. Once upon a time it was a view embraced by a handful of British historians - most of them turn of the century explorers and colonists in their own right. But it has always been an outsider's view, completely divorced from the reality of how Tibetans of all walks of life view their own society and their own history. ...

For the most part, Parenti and the handful of historians who have adopted the view of old Tibet as a despotic feudal theocracy have had little if no contact with actual Tibetans either in or outside Tibet. Therefore, they have no real way of gauging the sentiments of the Tibetan people....

...the true testament to the fact that Tibetans have been far from content under Chinese rule lie in the actions of the people themselves. Ever since the Chinese invasion and occupation there has been substantial popular resistance to Chinese rule in Tibet. This resistance has taken many forms over the years - leafleting, public demonstration, mass non-cooperation, economic boycott, and armed uprising are all forms of protest have been practiced by Tibetans inside Tibet, at the risk of their own lives.

The Chinese government has faced phenomenal opposition from the Tibetan people, certainly far more opposition than the Lhasa government ever faced from its own population, which does not do much to further the argument that 'old Tibet' was a terribly repressive society. Nor does the fact that Tibetan refugees continue pour out of Tibet at a rate never seen prior to 1959. In a classic case of uninformed conjecture, Parenti supposes that Tibetan refugees never left prior to 1959 because the 'systems of control' were so deep and that Tibetans were 'afraid of amputation'. Any quick glance at a map of Tibet, with its vast, unpatrolable borders, or any basic knowledge of the structure of Tibetan society would quickly reveal that Tibetans - should they have wanted to escape their 'feudal masters' - would have had little problem doing so.

Using inexpensive off-the-shelf gear they managed to broadcast a live video of the protest before the Chinese "People's Armed Police" caught wind of the "evil Freedom banner" they were holding and quickly grabbed them into custody. But the video had already been streamed into safety and in near real-time uploaded to various video-streaming sites.

"Jeff's wireless received the video from Shannon's camera transmission, and sent the signal through an analog-digital converter that output firewire into his MacBook computer...not much different from using a WII or Playstation or Final Cut. Quicktime Broadcaster downsized and compressed the video to a data rate the satellite connection could handle (220kbps at 15 frams/sec, compressed eventually to 100 kbps), and sent it via satellite (Inmarsat system using a BGAN Java program) to a Students for a Free Tibet computer, which was also running Quicktime Broadcaster. They immediately uploaded the three minute video to YouTube. As a backup, Flickr, YouTube, Pando and other accounts were set up on the computer to upload images and video in the event Quicktime Broadcaster failed to send video, but an Internet connection was still live".

Being protected by foreign passports the protesters had to only endure verbal threats, separation from fellow protesters, sleep depravation etc. for less then three days before being deported from the Chinese-occupied Tibet. However for the exiled Tibetan member of the crew the price of taking part in the protest was far heavier since he would now be banned from returning to his homeland... until Tibet regains it freedom, or at least until the Chinese people change their criminal and expansionist CCP regime to one which doesn't commit systematic genocide against China's historical neighbours.

For indigenous Tibetans living under Chinese oppression any action calling for freedom in Tibet will without exception result in far more horrifying treatment involving unimaginable forms of torture and years, even decades of imprisonment in one of the many Chinese concentration camps like Drapchi outside Lhasa. More than a few Tibetans - often young buddhist nuns or monks - have died in the Chinese gulags and this horror show has continued for several decades. Even people like the visiting EU Commissioner for Human Rights is denied access to these Tibetan prisoners of conscience.

More information about this Base Camp protest and the Tibetan struggle in general can be found from the Students For A Free Tibet and Phayul websites.

I fail to see how Google operating in China is endorsing the Chinese government.

Collaborating with a violent regime, on their terms, to withhold critical information of the regime's crimes from their ignorant subjects... how can that not be considered endorsing the regime?

Perhaps you lack perspective. What if such a brutal totalitarian regime from a foreign country was strangling the life away from your people, language, religion, culture, history and national identity with a Final Solution looming ever closer?

Can you somehow try imagining that it was you, your family, your friends and your whole nation being wiped out by an indoctrinated and unrepenting alien horde?

Then you'd witness how businesses and politicians from the supposedly freedom-respecting parts of the world would queue up to strike business deals with your torturers, even running "information-seeking services" which would for some reason omit any mention of the horrors you and your people keep facing. As if life under that regime was just fine and dandy.

Every time people from these supposedly freedom-loving countries arrive to make deals with the Chinese regime or just under its glorious guidance and regulations, it gives them another stamp of approval and tells the Chinese populace that their Great Leaders are truly making their nation stronger and stronger! That their strangling of Tibet and stealing the Tibetans' natural resources is not just making the Chinese richer but there's nothing wrong with committing murder and landgrab (unless others try something similar, like the Japanese...)!

Just look up Tibet using the collaborating "information services". All those happy stories of grateful Tibetans singing their praises to the glorious and enlightened Chinese Red Army, the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Motherland... How bloody marvellous!

Instead of being deeply shamed for being worse that their invading Japanese oppressors were over sixty years ago, the Chinese are not allowed to see any reason to change their evil ways.

By collaborating with the Chinese regime, Google and other foreign "information providers" are simply helping the regime to maintain a perception that the status quo is fully satisfactory.

Please spend a few moments reading why the status quo shouldn't be acceptable to anyone respectful of basic human rights.

Not all of us have the same concept of "personal freedoms" that you do. We understand that we must sacrifice some of our personal freedoms for the greater good of the society as a whole. I can only speak for my friends, family and myself, but we give these freedoms happily and in the knowledge that we know that the government that we elected works for the benefit of all in China. Not all of us agree, we all know there are plenty of dissidents who openly voice their opinions, but you must recognise that these can be dangerous people.

Sure, launching military invasions of neighbouring countries, annexing their land and national resources and systematically extinguishing those neighbours' indentities and statehoods is certainly "beneficial to all of China", but do you find that acceptable?

If your people, the Chinese, were still suffering under brutal Japanese occupation the same way that the Tibetan people are in reality suffering under Chinese oppression, would you be fine with that?

Is it acceptable for a China to commit genocide and for the Chinese people to do nothing to stop it?

Are you ashamed or proud of that imperialist aggressor aspect of your country?

Do you hate the Japanese for having attempted to do to China (over sixty years ago) what the Chinese have been doing to Tibet since 1950? (incidentally, your arguments for accepting CCP's dictatorship sound eerily similar to what the Japanese were indoctrinated to believe in the 1930s and 1940s.)

The thing is : http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/ is not accessible from the Chinese Internet
So the rank on google doesnt matter at all, i just cannot access the links even if they show up (very frustrating with all those Wikipedia links in google which i cannot access directly)

From the FAQ:
Q: What about Yahoo! and Microsoft etc., they're already doing this?

A:We deplore Yahoo and Microsoft's actions as well but as the industry leader, Google's impact is enormous. Google's decision to create its product to the Chinese authorities' specifications sets a very dangerous precedent of bringing the most advanced technology to the most closed and repressive government under the guise of effecting change. More importantly, the launch of Google.cn is a reversal of Google's policy of non-cooperation with China's internet censorship program.
If this isn't a sign of bias, I don't know what is. I've also noticed that when you search for Microsoft, 8 out of 11 times they are comparing Microsoft to Google, and Microsoft's equally abysmal record is always glossed over and not gone into detail like they do with Google. This smells like media manipulation to me. Yahoo and Microsoft must be both loving this.

From the FAQ:
Q: What about Yahoo! and Microsoft etc., they're already doing this?

A:We deplore Yahoo and Microsoft's actions as well but as the industry leader, Google's impact is enormous. Google's decision to create its product to the Chinese authorities' specifications sets a very dangerous precedent of bringing the most advanced technology to the most closed and repressive government under the guise of effecting change. More importantly, the launch of Google.cn is a reversal of Google's policy of non-cooperation with China's internet censorship program.
If this isn't a sign of bias, I don't know what is. I've also noticed that when you search for Microsoft, 8 out of 11 times they are comparing Microsoft to Google, and Microsoft's equally abysmal record is always glossed over and not gone into detail like they do with Google. This smells like media manipulation to me. Yahoo and Microsoft must be both loving this.

Sign up for Yahoo "total search monitoring" now and you may win a free trip to a slave labor camp, err, "resort", of your government's choice!

Just ask Li Zhi and Shi Tao, who thought they were anonymous when they made pro-democracy forum posts! Both are now rotting away in prison, uh we mean enjoying their free vacations at the expense of the Chinese government - since Yahoo turned their information over to the Chinese authorities.

Tao won a ten year trip, and Zhi got eight glorious years of FREE (re)EDUCATION!

http://blog.studentsforafreetibet.org/?p=152

It is easy to forget that by agreeing to censor its search engine in cahoots with the Chinese dictatorship, Google is now also helping repress millions of Tibetans who have suffered under harsh military occupation by the Chinese since 1950.

Since people tend to be more familiar with the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust or Stalin's invasions and gulags, what if Google had made a business pact with the Nazis or Stalin providing their ignorant populations with entertainment and "harmless legitimate-looking facts" while suppressing all knowledge of the horrors those regimes caused to the people they oppressed?

This is what Google (and Microsoft and Yahoo) are doing in China today. All knowledge of the Chinese crimes against the Tibetan nation or the Tibetan people's struggle to regain their independence are systematically wiped out from their search results as if none of it ever happened, at the behest of the ruling Chinese Communist Party dictatorship.

What is the point of having an "information service" which covers up the most crucial information relating to massive human rights violations? A glorified pacifier to placate the ignorant masses while their ruling regime is busy carrying out genocide to its horrible conclusion?

An estimated 1,500,000 Tibetans (!!) have already perished under the Chinese occupation (nearly a fifth of total population), Tibetan language, buddhist religion, identity and history are systematically suppressed while the CCP is promoting Chinese settlers to overrun Tibet demographically. Not to mention Tibetan natural resources being stolen, nuclear waste dumped there and more nuclear missile sites being built to threaten all democracies south of the Himalayas. Or the brutality of the CCP's paramilitary police against the large number of Tibetan political prisoners being held in secret camps across Tibet. The Chinese population should be allowed to compare these facts to the current feed of Communist Party-driven anti-Japanese propaganda over that brutal, if partial invasion that ceased to take place over sixty years ago. Which invasion is supposed to be less evil and why?

Google's Chinese (dis)service will compliantly keep any of this information from reaching the Chinese or the Tibetans under Chinese occupation because an unelected and expansionist regime wanted them to collaborate.

This shouldn't be only about self-centered westerners worrying about their god-given personal privacy, although privacy is of course extremely important even in democracies with other safety mechanisms against abuse. No, it is far more sinister when corporations from the "democratic world" are helping cover up a holocaust or genocide being committed by their business partners!

What we need is search, webmail etc. services which are guaranteed to remain neutral and safe without turning evil at the first profit-motive. Or which are not subject to American "shareholders uber alles" mentality which corrupted Google. Could/should such services be based in Switzerland or Sweden, both historically neutral territories without track record of collaborating with dictatorial regimes? Would they need massive financing, thereby potentially subjecting them to the whims of the moral-free financial markets, or could enough of their functions (CPU load, distributed and encrypted storage) be offloaded, a la bittorrent, to contributing users and neutral, respectable institutions?

How could the OSS communities help build safe alternatives to Google's morality and privacy-compromised offerings?

In the meanwhile some Tibetan support groups are promoting

Tibetans Outraged by Google's "Evil" Plan for Censorship in China "Don't Be Evil" Protest Planned for Google Headquarters Today San Francisco - Students for a Free Tibet is outraged at Google's decision to join hands with the Chinese Government in its censorship efforts. Google has launched a web search engine custom-built to the Chinese authorities' specifications that blocks access to information about Tibet, human rights, and other topics sensitive to Beijing. "Students and young people worldwide are appalled by Google's decision to become active partners in China's censorship apparatus," said Lhadon Tethong, Executive Director of Students for a Free Tibet. "Google's participation in the Chinese government's program of repression and information control renders the company motto "Don't be evil" a terrible joke." Google rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft have already shown a willingness to cooperate with Chinese authorities. Last year, Yahoo! provided information that helped jail a Chinese dissident for ten years and last month, Microsoft shut down a Chinese political blogger's site for "not complying with local law." "Political and corporate leaders constantly tell us that foreign business will contribute to a more open and democratic China," added Ms. Tethong. "This is yet another sign that China is in fact forcing foreign businesses to be more closed and anti-democratic." Tibetans and their supporters will hold a demonstration at 5:00 pm today at Google Headquarters at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, CA. Students for a Free Tibet http://www.studentsforafreetibet.org/ Contacts: Lhadon Tethong (917) 418-4181 lhadon@studentsforafreetibet.org Thupten Tsering (510) 381-8384 thupten@studentsforafreetibet.org

Is this the line that goes straight to the Dali Lama's monastary that he can no longer occupy? Or is it the one that will carry the 5 year old, kidnapped Panchen Lama (2nd in command to the Dali Lama) back to his homeland. China is communist people -- they invade other lands (at least the US isn't communist). Free Tibet!