YouTube video: Michael Parenti, anti-Tibet?

[Mal7]

This is a transcript of a part of a YouTube video of Michael Parenti talking about Tibet:

That’s what the Chinese did. They abolished slavery and feudalism in old Tibet. So that’s the thing to look at. The Chinese were not angels in coming into Tibet, but they did eliminate usury, this backlog. The peasants were taxed, they were taxed for everything, tax when you got married, tax if you have a child, tax when the child died, tax if your sheep gave birth to a lamb you had to pay a tax [. . .] Tax for just about every conceivable place you turn. If there was a wedding you had to pay a tax for that and the like.

It was debts that the poor owed to the rich, the secular rich and to the church. Those debts were big and they accumulated and they went on and on from generation to generation. They were inherited, so you could inherit your great-grandfather’s debt and still not be able to pay it off. So that was abolished too by the Chinese. So they did a few good things for the better it does seem. [. . .]

The Tibetan ruling class had nothing against Chinese. Every Dalai Lama, one of them was put in with Chinese troops. I mean the Chinese troops were there all the time. They were connected. During the Kuomintang days under Chiang Kai-shek the Tibetan ruling class was perfectly obedient and Chiang Kai-shek said Tibet is a part of China, this reactionary fascist Chiang Kai-shek.

It’s only when they got in conflict with the Communists that the western media started talking about Tibet as an independent nation being aggressed and conquered by the Chinese but the Chinese were always there. The trouble after 1950 with the Chinese is that they were a different kind of Chinese, they were Chinese Communists, and they were pressuring the Tibetan ruling class to start equalizing, to start abolishing some of their worst abuses; and they refused to do it and that’s when the Chinese really moved in and took over the place and kicked that class out of there.

The Dalai Lama himself I discovered is not a pacifist that’s a myth about him. He says violence has to be used sometimes in the name of good, you can’t rule it out.

- _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIVq_eV5bQc

Although the debate on whether or not Tibet has always been part of China is a polarized one, with propaganda used by both sides, Parenti seems to me to have pretty much adopted wholesale the Chinese Communist Party’s propagandized version of history.

I think the social organisation of pre-1950 Tibet is better described as "religious feudalism" or as a theocracy, rather than simply as "feudalism". Most families sent off at least one son to a monastery to become a monk. Monasteries stored grain to give out when there a bad season. There were serious famines in the 1960s after the CCP abolished this system.

The previous Dalai Lama (the 13th) fled to India in 1910 when Chinese troops were attacking Lhasa.

In May 1910 I was instructed to inform the Dalai Lama that the British Government would not intervene between China and Tibet, and that they could recognize only the de facto Government, i.e. that set up by China in Tibet in place of the Tibetan Governement. The status quo and the promises of China went by the board. The Tibetans were abandoned to Chinese aggression, an aggression for which the [1904] British Military Expedition to Lhasa and subsequent retreat were primarily responsible.

- Sir Charles Bell, in Tibet, Past and Present (1924), page 113. [Bell had a long career in India working for the Indian Civil Service, including as the British Political Representative in Tibet. He wrote several interesting books on Tibet and its history, including a Tibetan grammar, a Tibetan dictionary, and a biography of the previous Dalai Lama.]

By June 1912 the Chinese were without power in central Tibet. The Dalai Lama and his entourage accordingly returned from their two years’ exile [. . .] A few months after His Holiness’s return to Tibet, the Chinese troops in Lhasa surrendered. They were deported by the Tibetans across the Indian frontier [. . .] In eastern Tibet the Chinese were able to maintain most of their ground. The contest continued there, off and on, with varying fortune.

- ibid, page 122.

After the Dalai Lama returned to Tibet in 1912, orders were sent to each district in the two central provinces to send four representatives to give their opinion both on matters of external policy and on any features of the internal administration that seemed to them in need of reform. They were expressly forbidden to say, ‘I am a man of no position and do not understand these things’. Among the questions then discussed were:
(1) With what Foreign Power or Powers should Tibet make friends?
(2) Whether to increase the size of the army; and, if so, how to obtain the revenue to pay for this.
(3) What reforms, if any, should be introduced into the administration of justice?

To the first question the usual replies were,
(a) ‘Make friends with Britain; she is the nearest to Lhasa.’
(b) ‘Make friends with any one Power and then stick to her. Do not change from one to another.’
(c) ‘Make friends with China; she is strong and populous. Unless you can insure some other strong Power helping Tibet, China will take revenge on us later on.’

As regards the raising or revenue, the replies came:
(a) ‘Make the landed estates of the aristocracy pay rent and give cash salaries to those who serve the Government, instead of paying them, as at present, mostly by their rent-free grants of land.’
(b) ‘Make the monastic estates pay rent and give the monasteries subsidies in cash.’ But others objected that the three great monasteries (Sera, Drepung, and Ganden) would never obey an order of that kind.
(c) ‘Increase the size of the army. Pay the soldiers in cash and give land to their parents. Increase the amounts lent to the traders from the Government treasuries, and thus increase the revenue.’

The preoccupation of the campaign in eastern Tibet prevented much action being taken on the suggestions of the people. But the army has been increases, as has the amount lent to the traders. And to some extent the soldiers are now paid in cash.

The representatives were mostly managers of landed estates, large or small, government or private. They stated their opinions more readily than might have been expected, for it was the first time in the history of Tibet that such a gathering had taken place.

In difficult matters of foreign policy, however, especially where China was concerned, the Dalai Lama preferred to rely on the advice of his Ministers or on his own initiative. For the National Assembly took too long a time over its deliberations. And by writing conciliatory letters, the Chinese gained over a good many of its members to their side.

- ibid, pages 143-144

The internal affairs of China having by this time settled down to some extent, the Government of the Szechuan province dispatched a force to Tibet to restore the Chinese position there. This was during the summer of 1912. Great Britain thereupon addressed a memorandum to China, to the effect that she would not recognize the right of China to intervene actively in the internal administration of Tibet, that she demurred to Yuan Shih Kai’s Presidential Order, that she did not dispute the right of China to station a Representative at Lhasa, but that she would not agree to the stationing of an unlimited number of troops in Tibet. A written Agreement on the foregoing lines was asked for. China at first refused. Later on, however, recognizing the strength of the Tibetan position, she faced the facts and agreed to a Conference.

-ibid, page 149.

In the old days Tibet and China waged war with each other on fairly equal terms. Once at least China seized the Tibetan capital; once at least Tibet captured the capital of China. During the seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era, neither China nor India escaped invasion by the Tibetans, though their lack of organization and culture, combined with their inability to live in hot climates, prevented the latter from holding their gains.

But, when the softening influence of Buddhism extended its hold over the country, the power of the Tibetans in war gradually declined. From Nepal, Kashmir, and India came priests preaching the new religion; from China also priests and the main arts of civilization.
[. . .]
Thus it was that, in the eighteenth century, the early Manchu Emperors, then at the zenith of their military power, were able to establish for China a considerable method of control over Tibet.
[. . .]
When the military power of China waned under the feebler rule of the later Manchu Emperors, she had to rely more and more on diplomacy to maintain her position in Tibet.
[. . .]
Gradually, however, the power of China decline more and more. A favourite Chinese way of claiming authority over subordinates is by giving them seals of office, and this practice was followed by giving a new seal to each Dalai Lama. In the case of the last two, however, the Tibetan Government was strong enough to refuse this token of subordination. In the election of the present Dalai Lama some forty-five years ago [i.e. the election of the previous, 13th Dalai Lama in 1878] the Tibetan authorities definitely refused to place his name in the golden urn [an urn from which the Chinese official or Amban would select the name of the next Dalai Lama].

-ibid, page 210.

The deposition of the Manchu Emperor still further weakened the tie between the two countries. For the Manchus are regarded in Tibet as followers of the Lamaist religion and the Manchu Emperors as incarnations of the Buddha of Wisdom [. . .]

- ibid, page 213.

It may be argued that, whatever might be the opinion as to Chinese actions in Tibet, the country was undoubtedly under the suzerainty of China. But Asia does not think along European lines. The Tibetan Government maintain that the Dalai Lama is the spiritual guide and the Chinese Emperor his lay supporter. All who are well acquainted with the East know what this relationship involves. It is the duty of the layman to help his priest in all ways possible, but the priest does not on that account become the layman’s servant. Whatever help China may have rendered to Tibet was rendered in that capacity and does not in any sense put Tibet under China. ‘You will find no treaty’, they used to continue, ‘by which Tibet recognizes China is her overlord.’

When I pointed out to a representative Tibetan of the governing classes that the foreign relations of his country were for a long time conducted through the Amban, who had also exercised considerable power in the internal administration, he put the matter in this way: ‘The Amban and his soldiers were first posted at Lhasa as a bodyguard to the Dalai Lama. The Chinese, being cleverer than us Tibetans, gave presents frequently to the Dalai Lama, to the leading monasteries, and to the most influential officials. The Amban gradually converted into a bodyguard for himself the soldiers who had been sent originally as a bodyguard for the Dalai Lama. In ways like these China gradually worked Tibet into a position resembling political subordination.

- ibid, pages 215-216.

 

[l apprenti de forgeron]

Although the debate on whether or not Tibet has always been part of China is a polarized one, with propaganda used by both sides, Parenti seems to me to have pretty much adopted wholesale the Chinese Communist Party’s propagandized version of history.

This topic reminds me a excerpt of Laura from B. Alan Wallace's book "The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness":

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=26362.0

To continue my own personal narrative, which underlies and motivates this book, at the age of twenty-one I became so disenchanted with all the options presented to me by both my religious and scientific education that I turned my back on my native society to seek out the wisdom of a civilization radically dissimilar to, and disengaged from, the modern West. This quest brought me to Dharamsala, India, the home of the Dalai Lama and a nucleus of Tibetan civilization in exile. While I had voluntarily exiled myself from my homeland in disillusionment with my native culture, the Tibetan refugees with whom I came to live had fled their beloved homeland in order to preserve their native culture.

In 1949, the Chinese communists had invaded Tibet, and in the ensuing decades, especially during the Cultural Revolution, they were responsible for the deaths of up to a million Tibetans and the genocidal destruction of Tibetan civilization. The heart of this culture is Tibetan Buddhism, and to this day it has been the special target of Chinese aggression. This indicates that at present the main ideological thrust of the Chinese mission in Tibet is not the imposition of a socialist economic system—which the Dalai Lama and many other Tibetans are happy to embrace—but a belief system that is profoundly at odds with the worldview of Tibetan Buddhism. That ide- ology is still being forcefully propagated in Tibet, long after the socialist ideals of Mao have been displaced by the capitalist ideals of unbridled industrial development and consumerism.

What then is this ideology? According to the current Chinese propaganda in Tibet, it is the doctrine that science presents the one true view of reality and the solutions to humanity's problems are all to be found in technology. Religion, this doctrine declares, is superstition, and it must be rooted out by whatever means necessary, including forcible indoctrination and violence. While it would be wonderful for the Tibetans to learn about science and technology—and the Dalai Lama himself is keenly interested in such knowledge and is strongly backing science education for the Tibetans in exile—the Chinese are intent on promoting a materialistic ideology more than on promoting science itself. Thus, I have found that when backed by political and military power without restraint by the ideals of democracy, the ideology of science can be just as intolerant and vicious in its suppression of competing worldviews as any traditional religion. Moreover, while Tibetans had for centuries maintained a sustainable economy and population in balance with their natural environment, since the Chinese invasion, Tibet has been largely denuded of its forests, its wildlife has been ravaged, and its cities have been polluted; its northern plateau is now used as a dumping site for nuclear waste. Instead of having the opportunity of a liberal education in modern science, the Tibetans have been hammered by the iron fist of a science-based ideology that has suppressed freedom of thought and led to the desecration of their homeland.

What immediately struck me about the Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala, despite the horrendous tragedies they had experienced, was their extraordinary good cheer, optimism, friendliness, and generosity. They had found freedom in exile, but they brought with them human qualities of wisdom and compassion that I valued above all else. I became so drawn to the integrated worldview, values, and way of life presented by the Tibetan scholars and contemplatives with whom I studied that for years I sought total immersion in this culture that was so far removed from my own. Here I found deep spiritual truths similar to those I believed to be embedded in Christianity, but I also encountered a highly intelligent matrix of rational theories and contemplative practices designed to put those theories to the empirical test.

At last I felt I had found a worldview that satisfied my longing for spiritual truths and values, integrated with rational theories and methods of inquiry into the nature and potentials of consciousness and its relation to the natural environment. Eventually, though, it became increasingly obvious to me that in abandoning my native culture and immersing myself in an alien one, I had fragmented myself further. So after fourteen years in exile from the mainstream of Western society, I chose to return to my homeland and to complete my undergraduate education at Amherst College, where I decided to focus my studies on the paradigm of modern science: physics. Thereafter, to further integrate my understanding of sci- ence and religion, I earned a doctorate in religious studies at Stanford University, where I studied comparative religion, psychology, and the philosophy of science.

As Parenti, appears to be a very intelligent man who thinks for himself. He must know many of the failures of communism (intrinsic, not only caused by capitalism). One problem I see is that communism has taken to himself, as his own prerogatives, as the owner and director of all the revolutions in the world. Perhaps coming revolutions seem raise the flag and communist ideas but then will turn to other changes in society, more deeper ones, as the detection and eradication of those pathological in power?

Here is another Parenti's video that I started seeing:

"Dr. Michael Parenti: The 1% Pathology And The Myth of Capitalism"
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKyX7GNHYkQ