There is no difference between Palestine and Tibet. Both are occupied. Both indigenous peoples try to resist unsuccessfully. Why is the British left silent about Tibet?
Why does the American right support only Tibet and not Palestine? Edit: Or rather, I should say: Why is the American right only opposed to Chinese occupation and not to Israeli occupation?
How terribly rude to answer a question with a question. Haha. The American right is a coalition. Some support Israel because the existence of the Kingdom of Israel is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Christ. Some support Israel because they are from the national defense wing of the conservative movement and believe Israel enhances US security. Others believe in an affinity and kinship with Jews living in a democracy. Others believe that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I believe that war is coming to the middle east and it is advisable to get out of the way and let the parties settle a dispute between competing and intractable nationalisms. The Chinese have killed a million Tibetans over the course of the last sixty years. http://necrometrics.com/20c5m.htm#Mao My wife's cousin used to be stationed in Lhasa. He's regaled us with stories of hunting down Tibetan splitists.
Well, I'm not a British leftist so I couldn't answer for one. Surely you don't view any of those points as valid (because, of course, they aren't!).
I'm waiting for Godot, not the Second Coming of Christ. The Israelis and the Palestinians are likely to pass into history along with much of the Levant and Iran. The Tibetans are likely to end up like the Mohicans. I think the greatest enemy of America is the United States Govt. America itself may have outlasted its usefulness in advancing individual liberty. Have a nice day.
It isn't. I am a member of Amnesty. There is no silence. Why is the quality of your posts suddenly deteriorating? Discussions about the Britsih Left or any large group of people have to be nuanced to be interesting. Why have you given up insight and nuance for blunt instruments instead? Come on Albert! You do a good job of providing interesting conservative counterbalance to liberal thinking. Now it would seem you are losing confidence in this approach and reverting to one line vulgarity. Are we getting to you? Is your inner liberal crying out to be heard and you find this a way of suppressing him? Even the stuff about your wife, as if this is an emotional question for you and not an intellectual one. I think you are cracking... Come back...we will welcome you like a prodigal returning.
Have you read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? If so you will remember Belisarius who served the Emperor Justinian from Persia to Libya. Belisarius was also the subject of a wonderful book by Robert Graves. Gibbon wrote glowingly of the nobility of the character of Belisarius, but was disappointed that the noble general was nevertheless a servile servant of a very bad master. Gibbon concluded that it is difficult for any person to rise above his or her times. I think there are different levels of consciousness. It is possible to conceive of a better world while being unable or unwilling to see it born. This is where the life of the mind and the experiences of the flesh part company. I was born during the heighth of empire in an era akin to the reign of the Roman Emperors Trajan and Hadrian. There was much virtue in the country that I loved. I have watched the accumulated mistakes of two generations squander the inheritance. I now live in an era much like that of the Roman Emperor Commodus...an age of decadence and dishonesty without relief. This experience has colored my vision. A new and virtuous people will arise in this land some day, but it will not be in my lifetime and such people will not be Americans. I am not at peace. My emotions range from detachment to rage to mourning for what has passed. I see European leftists chastise what remains of the American people for our lack of sympathy for the Palestinians. But no one mourns for the passing of America before the flood tide of illegal aliens who have built a parallel society. This has had the effect of hardening my heart. I was once an ardent American patriot. Now I see the US Govt. as the instrument of destruction for all I have loved. This has produced a stridency in my views. When I was young I studied Russian history. I couldn't get inside the heads of the Russian nobility before the October Revolution. I couldn't understand why they made such few and poor attempts to save Tsarist Russia. I now understand why. They had given up hope.
Beautiful post. It makes me want to go and read Gibbon. You have identified the weak point of my outlook - my optimism - and made it feel like you have taken the same journey that I have and have yet gone further. Can you remember when: Can you not see that we can recreate the times: And invoke the spirit of mankind's potential: As citizens of Tom Paine's world: where we are amongst those who are: And yet the reign of terror that followed in France did not kill the French Republic. So even in America we should remember that there are beautiful values that still unite us. I can't read this speech without my eyes filling with tears http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1984/60684a.htm And America still has fine aspirations to crown its very real achievements: Maybe even these words:
The best thing would be when Britain is the most odious of the Western nations will turn into "Third World country" such as Somalia. Britain - terrorized the world for several centuries, arranging conspiracies, assassinations and provocations. It's time most disgusting country (after USA) had finally silenced forever.
I'd agree with that. The British left are actually quite vocal about tibet, although it might not get reported so widely: http://sftuk.org/ http://www.freetibet.org/contact/contact-us There are several differences between Tibet and Palestine, though. Firstly, and most importantly, is the realisation among politicians that the 'enemy' in Tibet is a country that the west cannot afford to cross in many ways (financial, military, and so on). Secondly, it's not a situation that the West created quite so directly by its own recent actions. Thirdly, there is not the same capacity for it to erupt into an entire, region-wide, all-out war (as long as the west doesn't get involved) that could not only threaten regional peace, but world oil supplies. It's not the 'British Left' that are quiet, but the politicians. Sadly, there just isn't the interest among politicians for getting too involved in the situation, and that and the lack of open warfare (as well as the actual physical distance) keeps the issue from making constant headlines in the same way. It certainly isn't an issue that is being ignored by a large number of campaigners on the 'British Left', though. In fact, there was quite a sizeable protest about it in 2008 when the Olympic Torch visited London on its way to China. [/IMG]
You carry on ranting from the mafia terrorized, cesspit of humanity that is Russia. Worship your effeminate prince who prances about on a horse flexing his muscles and fantasizing that he looks manly! I don't know what's funnier - Putin or the country of ********s who actually fall for him! Eulogize the Georgian tyrant who killed tens of millions of his countrymen. Why don't you tell us what a great Russian the butcher Stalin was? I prefer Trostky's judgement on that one: "the greatest mediocrity of the Party". Alas, Russia now cannot even aspire to mediocity. Russia is a tragic vodka soaked land. It is marked out by its hereditary allergy to liberty. A nation that didn't liberate its serfs until the late nineteenth century! A nation that took the most vicious monarchy, turned it to the most cravenly cowardly and disgusting version of socialist thuggery you could imagine, and then deposed Gorbachev the one decent statesman they have every had, first for a drunken dancing slob (Yeltsin), and then for a preening spy (the current closeted homosexual in denial, Putin, who rules Russia today). How could a nation discredit the whole gambit of political ideologies so effectively - the worst Kings (Romanovs), the worst liberals (Kerensky), the worst socialists (Lenin and Stalin), the worst capitalists (billionnaire thieves)...only at tyranny do Russians excel. They can silence you, intimidate you, lock you up, make you disappear, poison you, kill any journalists you talk to, make you pay them a bribe (in one short car journey my driver paid five bribes to five separate Moscow policemen!). Any Russians who yearn for freedom are destroyed by the gaggle of infantile nationalists who control the country. It is a land where success depends on your ability to lick the bosses arse (Medvedev), one that tyrannized Balts and other slavs (murdering NKVD and KGB scum, rampaging through Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia), murdering them to the same extent the Nazis murdered them. A land where spivs, gangsters and their molls cruise the streets in bullet-proof cars. As Europe emerged from under the heel of the dark domination of Russia, its Eastern nations sought out constitutions, parliaments and the rule of law. Russia sought out Coca Cola, McDonalds and elected tyranny. Russia - a nation of nearly two hundred million people that is distinguished only by it enormous irrelevance. If any person, from any nation, ever feels uncomfortable about his country, this can be resolved easily. Thank God you were not born a Russian!
Thank God that I live in Russia, not rotten in the West! Englishmen have always tried to subdue Russia since the XVI century, but they do not have what did not happen. And will never be. Russia remains one of the few countries with full sovereignty and opposed to Britain, which had long been lost.
Any facts to go with this nonsense? For many, many years Great Britain and Russia were allies. We had a war in the 1840's but apart from that I'm pretty sure that Britain and Russia avoided each other. Unless you are talking about the pathetic attempts you made to have an Empire, where you couldn't even get started. I think you are talking "bollocks" as we say in England. We only choose to subdue countries worth subduing. Why would we want that stinking hole Russia?
murder of the Russian ambassador Griboedov in Persia 1829 poisoning Litvinenko with polonium intelligence agencies of Britain 2006 examples taken randomly and covering the XIX and XX century
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfnBVKrzX6Y&feature=player_embedded"]Tibet riots -15 March 08 - YouTube[/ame]
Griboyedov was murdered by a Persian mob Litvinenko of course by the current Russian government (2006 is in the XXI Century!) I suppose in your warped version of history the Romanovs were murdered by Winston Churchill? Where does this garbage come from? Very bizarre what can turn men's minds.
Griboyedov was killed by a mob of Persian mercenaries who have paid the British, then by law they are the organizers of the murder. Litvinenko was poisoned with intelligence agencies of Britain, due to the fact that the data possessed the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, as evidenced by the former Russian security services officer Andrei Lugovoi. Britain harboring Chechen rebel Akhmed Zakayev, as well as other criminal people like Berezovsky, who fled from Russian justice. Study data from reliable sources and not listen to the nonsense that fed West simple inhabitants.
Reliable sources? Pravda and Isvestia? Ha. In the Truth there is no news. In the News there is no truth.
Since CNN and BBC lost their faces as fair and unbiased infomation providers even Pravda is likely to be regarded a reliable source!
The Sun, Daily Mail and other British newspapers - if they remember about Russia, it is only in a negative light, and write an explicit lie, therefore, not surprising that the British wild views of Russia.
Aren't you the one constantly hammering on about crude nationalism, inane abuse, and so forth? I fail to understand how you can be upset at someone for criticizing Britain in such a manner, and then turn around and lambast another country in the way which you profess to abhor.
It's crude nationalism that I'm taking issue with. If someone has nothing other than irrational prejudice to offer, then polemic is appropriate.
