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But while I find it plausible, even likely, that the U.S. government has had a hand in stirring up the recent unrest (when has it not?) in Tibet, it would not have been in cohoots with the so-called "Dalai Lama clique", as Engdahl implies (and as the Chinese propaganda machines keeps on hysterically insisting), but rather among the angry young generation of Tibetans who the Dalai Lama has repeatedly and publicly urged to "calm down", both before and after the violence in March.

Certainly, such frustrated, desperate and increasingly educated young people would be ripe for manipulation, especially when they say things like,

What has nonviolence achieved for the Tibetan cause, apart from some converts to Buddhism in the West?

Seeking Buddhahood is one thing, and freedom for a country is another. We are fighting for freedom in the world and not freedom from the world.

Our leaders quote Gandhi.  But Gandhi saw British rule in India as an act of violence and said that resistance to it was a duty. I see the Chinese railway to Lhasa as a similar act of violence. What's wrong with blowing up a few bridges? How can such resistance be termed wrong and immoral?

"The Restless Children of the Dalai Lama"

It would have been better had Engdahl provided some specific evidence that the CIA and/or some other rightwing reactionary forces were behind the Tibet demonstrations and violence.  His essay makes for an entertaining just-so story, but the reader wonders why his theory should be taken as anything more than nicely spun speculation that is ultimately based on paranoia about American efforts to stimy China's rise to world prominence.

Of course, if his sources for such hard evidence were the same as those who arranged to have his article published on the China Internet Information Center, it would be understandable that they would not want to divulge how they obtained such inside information.

(Incidentally, you may want to add "LQD:" to the front of this diary title -- it stands for "Lazy Quote Diary", just a friendly way to let readers know that the bulk of a diary, in this case all of it, is quoted from another work.  It also helps if you put <blockquote>TEXT<blockquote> tags around the quoted text.)

A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

by marco on Fri Apr 18th, 2008 at 07:20:55 PM EST
Engdahl's original article claims that the CIA and the U.S. Defense Department are using "nonviolence" as a form of warfare against China, among other countries.  But anyone who thinks that the CIA knows anything about nonviolence is either crazy or so mesmerized by his own conspiracy theories that he needs to get some fresh air and sunshine. Here's one example of the Engdahl article's fabrications:  He names a single U.S. army officer who he says trained the Chinese students involved in the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, later allegedly trained the Falun Gong in nonviolence at some unspecified time, and even later supposedly advised protesters in Tibet.  The officer in question, who retired in 1991, is on record as saying that he never had contact with any of these people, and in any case there isn't a shred of evidence anywhere to substantiate such claims. Engdahl either made all this up, or channeled it from other purveyors of disinformation about nonviolent struggle like Michael Barker and Jonathan Mowat.  The fact is that nonviolent resistance boils up from within societies where basic rights are suppressed; you can't manufacture or manipulate that rage from Washington.  The U.S. government could never figure out how to contain the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement, which were notable internal nonviolent struggles directed against U.S. policies and institutions.  After failing to comprehend nonviolence in the 1960s and 1970s, it could hardly turn around and use nonviolent action to manipulate discontented Chinese students or Tibetans frightened about losing their cultural identity.  This article is simply laughable.
by Tom Paine on Thu Apr 24th, 2008 at 05:25:20 PM EST
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