Randy Cassingham's Blog

China's invasion and occupation of Tibet is one of the great unpunished crimes of the 20th century. Another equally great crime is our shameful lack of action or even condemnation, until now anyway. If Tibet had oil and China was smaller, we would have been in like a shot....

An interesting book about Tibet in the 1940's and 50's is Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer. He was a professional mountain climber. He and the rest of his climbing party were arrested in India by the British at the outbreak of World War II and imprisoned as enemy aliens, but he and and another climber escaped and after a year of trekking through the mountains made their way to Lhasa and befriended the Dalai Lama and other members of Tibetan society. The book has great photos and is much better than the movie.

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Sheesh: I'm still in mainland China, and had a hard time searching Amazon for those links -- apparently because of the word "Tibet" in the search box. I got around it, showing the futility of censorship.... -rc

The Chinese are taking an intelligent approach to the use of the Internet with that blocking strategy you mention. There is a lot of stuff on the Internet that the people should not be exposed to. Such as gun-nut websites (the NRA), right-wing brainwashing websites (like that of the viagra using Rush Limp-baugh) and Faux News websites (Fox News is nothing but a Bushite-RepubliCONs propaganda machine!). We should implement that same kind of blocking here in the USA. There are some things that the general populations just shouldn't know about.

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Yes, there are things on the Internet that people shouldn't see. But I'd much rather decide for myself, rather than let someone else decide for me, since only I know what I want to know and, more importantly, why. How sad it is that people can't grasp how stupid it is to try to dictate what others should know and how to think. I hope someone does it to you, and you can see how ridiculous it is for yourself. -rc

As the writer I.F. Stone once said, "All governments are liars." Nothing the government of China has to say about Tibet is any more relevant or truthful than things our own government has to say about the situation in the middle east or anywhere else.

What everyone knows, and what politicians everywhere refuse to acknowledge, is that the people of the world are far more inclined to get along with each other than their governments do. I have traveled half the world and consistently found people in other lands to be friendly, curious and, unfortunately, as misinformed about my culture as I was about theirs! And in every case the source of most of our misinformation was our own governments.

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Absolutely. A group of us was speaking to one of the Chinese guides, and one mentioned that when growing up, his parents tried to get him to eat by saying "There are children starving in China." Funny, the guide replied: when she was growing up, she was told "There are children starving in America." Really? I asked. Yes: the reasoning was that capitalism caused parents to think only of making money, rather than taking care of their children. The bottom line: propaganda muddies the truth. -rc

My daughter is a freshman at Ithaca College in upstate NY. The Dalai Lama spoke there (and at Cornell University and a theater in downtown Ithaca) two weeks ago. Unfortunately, the appearance on campus sold out immediately. But he is so highly respected that there were incredible crowds just trying to get a glimpse of him.

"Children starving in America..." Very insightful. Being an adventurous sort while growing up and as an adult, I always found the concept of institutionalized Communism to be stifling and suffocating. It wasn't until I worked with several Chinese gentlemen from Beijing that I found out how they viewed institutionalized Capitalism.

While I see Capitalism as the opportunity to discover and try new things, to take accomplishment in my endeavors, they see it as being ruthlessly cast into the 'wilderness' to survive as best as one can, if at all. They see Communism as a family relationship where people watch out and take care for each other.

While it didn't change my preferences, it did provide insight and understanding into the way that others choose their preferences.

Randy, I can't believe you dignified the comments of "Tariq - Ohio" with a response. If his/her/its comment had been posted in a political forum, it likely would have been deleted as flame-baiting and/or trolling. His/her/its ignorant, extremist desire to block the kind of speech that he/she/it finds offensive is exactly why we have the freedom of speech we do -- for example, my version of what's "right" is about as likely to offend "Tariq" as his/her/its did me. God Bless America. ;-)

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The main irony: if "his system" was in effect, he would not have the freedom to post his opinion on what should be done. -rc

Two thoughts:

First, it seems that our country is just out to pick fights the last few weeks. I'm not thinking that's a good idea - if EVERYONE put a trade embargo on us how long would we last?

Second, I assumed Tariq's comments were tongue-in-cheek given that the sites he mentioned that we shouldn't see are the ones that advocate censorship! Just goes to show that email is a hard way to communicate when you can't sense the sarcasm or not.

Appreciate the virtual tour - keep it up. (oops, guess that's 3 thoughts)

I for one am glad that you publish opinions that you disagree with. "Tariq - Ohio" gives the impression that only his/her opinions are correct. He/she has classified me as a right-wing gun nut while my leanings are more toward libertarian, primarily because when the government takes away his/her rights, it also takes away mine.

"Melodie - Olympia" brings up a good point. One of the major causes of the great depression was international reaction to protectionist policies our government instituted. Of course there were other causes too, but it was a major contributor.

And yes, I've also found while living in other countries that individuals tend to get along a lot better than our governments do.

The comment that "if Tibet had oil or China been smaller" is a myopic view of international politics. 1959 was still in the middle of the Cold War. The U.S., the Soviet Union, AND China were conducting nuclear bomb tests, all in preparation for attack by one of the others. Kruschev had just put down the Hungarian uprising with tanks. The Berlin Wall went up just a couple years later. 1959 saw Castro and Che Guevara take over the island of Cuba. Not long after that, they started exporting their concept of revolution all over the Caribbean and Latin America. Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as states that year. It was the time of Sputnik and the beginning of the Space Race between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

The first Americans died in action in Vietnam, and was the beginning of a seemingly unending conflict in which 58,000 Americans died over 10 years. In fact, China with its population of 3 billion compared to America's under 200,000, looked like it would welcome a nuclear war just to reduce its overcrowding.

1959 was a year in which it looked very much like the world would not survive one more decade. Oil was not a consideration back then, even if Tibet had been loaded with it.

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Good reminders all, except that you bollixed China's 1959 population. That was the start of The Great Chinese Famine, which saw at least 13 million people in China starve to death, dropping them from about 671.5 million in 1959 to around 658.6 million in 1961. The U.S. population in 1960 was 179.3 million.

China's current population is about 1.3 billion. -rc