>Brian wrote:
>
>>>. . . but the more likely reason today -- when China is clearly
>>>capitalist and in some ways more capitalistic than many
>>>longer-standing capitalist countries -- is that the revolt of
>>>Tibetans against China began with the support of the CIA
>>
>>Who cares how it started?
>
>
>When the leaders of a group -- the Tibetans, the Miskitos, the
>Hmongs, the Iraqi Kurds, etc. -- make a Faustian bargain like
>agreeing to be backed by the CIA in particular or Washington in
>general, it changes the estimation of the leaders -- though not of
>the peoples led by them -- in the minds of people who know: the
>estimation goes up in the minds of rightists, and the estimation
>goes down in the minds of leftists (excepting the confused souls in
>Hollywood).
Traditional Tibetan society was not the kind of thing that most Queer Buddhist Resisters could feel attached to: a deeply patriarchal, reactionary society, in which an impoverished mass paid tribute to an idle cast of priests. While that doesn't necessarily justify Chinese intervention, I find it really hard to get excited about defending Tibet. It's not unlike the choice between the USSR and traditional Afghan society: yes, the Soviets were horrendously brutal in their invasion, but Workers Vanguard had a point when they had their classic headline, "Hail the Red Army in Afghanistan."
Didn't the Dalai Lama notoriously make some homophobic remarks a few years ago, much to the shock of his fans in Hollywood?
Doug