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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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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March Madness
. On March 10th this year does CTA plan to honor the sacrifice of the Tibetan people in 1959 or celebrate the savage crushing of the Uprising by the PLA? The Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) just announced a live webcast of its official function for the 56th National Uprising Day at Dharamshala. Shockingly their publicity …
Bullying North Korea?
Yes, the DPRK (North Korea) is a dreadful place with an absolutely dreadful dictator, but I can’t get the over the feeling that the huge media driven fuss we’ve had about the Seth Rogen comedy (concerning a CIA plot to kill Kim Jong Un), the actual hacking of Sony Pictures computers and the ostensible “freedom …
Frying Up a Revolution
We were having dinner at the very cosy Little Tibet Restaurant at Jackson Heights last month. Someone insisted I try a Shabhalay from a plate he had ordered. It’s not my favorite food. The shabhalays I had eaten before had largely been products of institution kitchens (chi-thab): too oily, the dough wrap too leathery, stuffing …
India Impresses China Oppresses
. In the old days when you saw a movie in India you invariably got an Indian News Review newsreel before the main feature. From the early seventies there were occasional reports on India’s fledgling space program. A rocket would be launched and invariably it would corkscrew in the air and explode – or flame …
The Great Middleway Referendum Swindle
. This is probably the last article I am going to write on the subject of the Middle Way Approach (MWA). I have posted about a dozen pieces on various aspects of this policy: from its crafty (but dishonest) name, its simpleminded political and diplomatic justifications, its screwball economic rationale and its grovelling, too-clever-by-half, modi …
