Well, what would you call this?
You already know my thoughts on the Dalai Lama and his autocratic manner of ruling Tibet, so this should come as no more surprise to you than it does to me.“They took me away from my family and stuck me in a medieval situation in which I suffered a great deal,” said Torres, 24, describing how he was whisked from obscurity in Granada to a monastery in southern India. “It was like living a lie,” he told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. Despite his rebelliousness, he is still known as Lama Tenzin Osel Rinpoche and revered by the Buddhist community. A prayer for his “long life” still adorns the website of the Foundation to Preserve the Mahayana Tradition, which has 130 centres around the world. The website features a biography of the renegade guru that gushes about his peaceful, meditative countenance as a baby. In Tibetan Buddhism, a lama is one of a lineage of reincarnated spiritual leaders, the most famous of which is the Dalai Lama.According to the foundation biography, another leader suspected Torres was the reincarnation of the recently deceased Lama Yeshe when he was only five months old. In 1986, at 14 months, his parents took him to see the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India. The toddler was chosen out of nine other candidates and eventually “enthroned”.
I have not really blog about Tibet but I did some google research during the Tibet riot and monk killing innocent civilians in the run up to the Olympic. What I learned was that CIA have been involved in past Tibetan violence. But try saying that against the hollywood glorified Dalai Lama and you’ll be accused of being paranoid. But the fact are indisputable. Dalai Lama headed a feudalistic, abusive, torture style barbaric rule. He went into exile because the CIA sponsored rebellion failed.
I suspect a lot of so called independent media are in fact front for right wing empire building organization like PNAC. I remember there was a media called Canadian Free Press who was spreading Dalai Lama false propaganda. Not to be confused with the legitimate press outlet Canadian Press. I suspect the name was intentionally chosen to make it look legit.
I suspect you’re right. I did some research too, and sure enough, the Dalai Lama DID have CIA backing, back at a time when the CIA was actively trying to destabilize Mao’s China. They didn’t succeed at it, probably mainly because the Chinese didn’t need outside propaganda to know that something was wrong with the picture. Victor Marchetti writes about it in his book, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. Apparently the CIA thought it was a bonzer idea to sponsor these really brutal tribal horsemen trying to bring back the old feudal order. Then that all got old, along with the horsemen, and the rebel effort petered out into the glammed-up spectacle we see going on today.
What’s really funny is that the Dalai Lama was the one who handed over the country to China in the first place. He did it with the stipulation that he remain in place as ruler, and I guess he seriously believed Mao would allow him to keep his fiefdom. But when Beijing began to assert tighter authority (and the CIA horned in), that’s when the “protest” began. It wasn’t about communism or Chinese rule per se, but rather the fact that the Dalai Lama’s powers had been reined in.
I foresee that if Tibet ever comes out from under Chinese hegemony (which it probably won’t while this one’s alive), there will be rebellions within the year. They won’t be happy to find themselves under a resurgent medieval theocracy, dependent on international aid (from the World Bank, USAID, the IMF, etc.) and unable to democratically elect the leaders of their choice while the theocratic hierarchy go on living in palaces and getting the lion’s share of that international money. It will be a situation ripe for corruption, and “spirituality” will serve as the cover for a multitude of very un-Buddhistic sins.
BTW, the “Canadian Free Press” is not a real indymedia outlet, but a right-wing blog trying to make itself look like alternative news. I don’t know who finances them, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they had CIA money in their pockets, either.