Tibet

Heard that Bjork has gotten into trouble in Shanghai for rallying for independence in Tibet during a concert. She probably didn't understand that it would be very badly received. Well it's understandable that China (and also the man in the street in China) do not want Tibet independence.

So what about the Tibet question? It is a big country. It is a damn big country. It is the size of Iran. It's not easy to grant independence to Tibet. I heard that the Dalai Lama is resigned to not having independence, which is just as well: for all practical purposes, you have to depend on China for just about everything.

The other thing is that it's just your bloody arse luck if you are a smaller country stuck between 2 big countries. Just ask Korea and Poland. And Finland. So when China thinks about an independent Tibet, they're going to wonder if the Indians are going to gain influence in that country, have to think about the Russians. Better off declaring that you're part of China and heck with it.

But if they're going to dump all the Hans into the country, if they're going to repress you and stop you from being Tibetian, if they're going to colonise (this word rhymes with "sodomise") you then there's plenty to be upset about. And that's why a lot of people are protesting. I've said before that the Olympics are a big platform for a lot of unhappy people to make their political views better known to the world. And so it goes.

So it appears that the issue is not about the status of Tibet: we'll probably have an autonomous state. The immediate issue is how the thing is going to be governed. Divorces are always painful, and successions between countries are further complicated by the fact that the countries are still going to be neighbours after the succession. Sometimes (Singapore-Malaysia, Czech-Slovak) things are easier when both parties are consenting and other times when only 1 party wants the divorce things get a little messy.

Thing about China is this: yes you always have the Opium war getting mentioned. You also have those tremendous sufferings during the Japanese wars. The unequal treaties. Of course China is also perfectly capable of fucking itself (Great Leap Forward famines, civil wars, warlord period, cultural revolution etc). But China is also a colonial power. We don't really talk about colonies these days but it's still alive in a certain form: Russia with its problems with Chechnya, Israel and West Bank, China with Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan. The US and Cuba / Central America. Indonesia / East Timor. Serbia / Kosovo. As is usually the case you will go on and on about historical injustices, but it's a totally different story when you're the one trying to get those darn Tibetians to toe the line.

Tibetians seem like nice people and I'd like to see China treat them with a little more respect. Of course the Dalai Lamas have had a history of being tyrants and it's like their PR is really good. (This is not a comment about the current Dalai Lama since we don't really know how he would have run his own country.)

A friend visited Tibet recently, I wonder what she's thinking about the funky stuff going on in the country. Usually it's fight fight fight, then take a break to allow some tourists to pass through, snap a few pictures with your Kalashnikovs, then fight fight fight again.

Sorry, I know nuts about Tibet actually, I'm just rambling.

You know the Greeks understood the nature of things very well. Their gods were assholes who played around with common mortals for sport. It is the way that powerful countries mess around with smaller and weaker countries: not so much immoral as amoral, which means that sometimes they will be the good guy when it suits them.

When your backside is itchy then you will go stir up shit in Afghanistan and Iraq. And Uncle Sam will go dick around in Latin America in the manner of an unhygienic guy absent-mindedly scratching his balls every now and then. When the USSR was still around they sponsored wars in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Cuba, Ethiopia, Syria - basically anything to piss off the Americans, until they made the fatal mistake of messing around with Afghanistan. So when China rises to the fore, you just wonder how it's going to behave, given that it's now influencing Burma, Taiwan, North Korea, Tibet, India, Pakistan, Central Asia. It's always interesting to watch.