Some exile Tibetans are angry with Sikyong candidate Lukar Jam Atsok for criticizing HH’s policies. He has not only been attacked in speech and writing but also on video, in one of which the accuser bursts into tears and dramatically sobs out his condemnation. A specific accusation against Lukar is that he once talked about …
Growing Support for Lukar Jam Atsok in Europe
English Translation of an article written by veteran Tibet activist, Tsewang Norbu la (of Germany) recently published in Tibet Times Strong Rangtsen Results will Strengthen Umaylam True to my principle of transparent public dealings I am outing myself right at the beginning that I am going to cast my vote to Lukar Jam Atsok for …
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Raining on China’s Victory Parade
What Victory against Japan? Chinese Communist party cadres and members should bear in mind that Chairman Mao himself declared: “Chinese Communists should be grateful to the Japanese for invading China” otherwise the “… Communists would have remained too weak to seize power.” My source for this is unimpeachable. Mao’s personal physician – the one person always …
The Girl and the Golok Chiefs
My mother, Lodey Lhawang (nee Tethong) passed away peacefully on the morning of January 9th, 2005, at my home in the mountains of Tennessee. There are only a few thousand Tibetans scattered around North America, so it was probably my mother’s “accrual of merit” (sonam saba), as we say, that somehow the great monastery …
Buying the Dragons Teeth
Yesterday (24 Aug) was “Black Monday” on Wall Street. Within minutes after the opening bell, the Dow plummeted an unprecedented 1,089 points – the largest point loss ever, repeat “ever”, during a trading day. There was full-blown panic on the trading floor. And this was happening in Tokyo, London, Berlin, Paris, and Mumbai – in …
A Candidate for Free Tibet
“Strategic” thinking in the wonderful world of Tibetan politics is generally of the devious-to-the-point-of-idiocy kind. An advice received recently: “Jamyang la, please don’t show public support for Lukar Jam’s candidacy in the coming exile elections, as that will ruin his chances with all those people who don’t like you.” Oh yeah? How about the fact …
Rangzen Spring II
Cassandra was the beautiful daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. She was given the power of prophecy by the god Apollo, but when she refused to sleep with him he punished her with the curse of never being believed. Cassandra foresaw the destruction of Troy and warned the Trojans. Her predictions were …
Hearing the First Birdsong of Rangzen Spring
World attention has been riveted on the Greek economic turmoil in the last few weeks, but some Tibetans have probably been paying more attention to a comparatively larger but less discussed crisis – the stock market collapse in China. The New York Times reported last Monday that “about $2.7 trillion (latest figure $3.2 trillion) in …
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André Gide and the “Virtue of Freedom”
There are certain writers one must go back to, every once in a while, whenever one’s moral compass requires reorienting. Orwell and Lu Xun are excellent for this, but André Gide is no less effective when one has been hit by a case of the intellectual blahs. One of France’s greatest writers and the 1947 …
The Subliminal Clarity of Blurry Cellphone Videos
Anne Applebaum, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and scholar (Gulag, A History), writing on the 2008 uprising in Tibet, concluded: “Watching a blurry cell phone video of tear gas rolling over the streets of Lhasa yesterday, I couldn’t help but wonder when – maybe not in this decade …Tibet and its monks will have their …
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