Never again should we bother with "never again" :(

Up until four years ago, I had no idea about the Rohingya--the Muslim community that stands out in a Buddhist Burma.  In fact, if things were going well, I would not have known about them at all.  Perhaps all the way till my own end.

But, I read about them because all was not well.  Buddhist maniacs, especially led by one with an ominous nickname--the Buddhist bin Laden--were engaging in violence of every possible kind in order to wipe out the Ronhingya from Burma.

It was even more depressing when the much lauded Nobel Peace Prize-winning Aung San Suu Kyi kept silent.  Not a word from her.

I understand that a nobody like me can express all the righteous indignation I want, but that politicians have to compromise on principles in order to get things done.  But, compromise is one thing, and ethnic-cleansing/genocide is entirely another.  This NY Times report is a tough read!

The NY Times editorial says everything that I want to say:

Last month, President Obama lifted sanctions against Myanmar, citing “substantial progress in improving human rights” following the historic election victory of the Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party in November 2015. Tragically, that praise is proving premature.

Premature because of "a military campaign against the Rohingya."  In addition to covering things up:

Myanmar’s government has barred independent journalists from the region, and dismissed reports of abuses as “fake news” and “fake rape.”

The US, under the demagogue and his minions, is now providing plenty of cover for regimes to criticize the media reports as fake.  A remarkably depressing beacon we have become for the world!  Further, with all the Muslim-bashing that the fuhrer and his people did and do, we have no moral ground to tell the likes of Burma to stop the atrocities.  Thanks, you atrocious Republican voters!

We will simply stand by and watch as more and more Rohingya sob while saying, “They killed my father and mother. What is left for me in this world?”  Or like this:

Noor Ankis, 25, said the next morning soldiers went from house to house looking for young women.
“They grouped the women together and brought them to one place,” she said. “The ones they liked they raped. It was just the girls and the military, no one else was there.”
She said the idea of trying to escape flickered through her head, but she was overcome by fatalism. “I felt there was no point in being alive,” she said.

"Never again" has become such a hollow phrase. Sad!

Buddhists Ablaze ... Buddha Bombed ... WTF!

Sometimes, not very often, students ask me how I manage to talk and write about so many different things.  I tell them it is because I have no life, which never fails to make them smile.  Unlike me, most Americans know how to smile, and they smile well.

The real answer to their question is that I lucked out.  Right from the earliest years I can remember, I have been reading any damn thing within my sight.  If bored with nothing to read, I am one of those who will even read the nutritional information on a cereal box!  I joke that I go the dentist only because I get to read People magazine there.

Reading, or watching videos in this modern setting, is also a curse, sometimes.

If only I had let that New Yorker gift-subscription expire!  , But, of course, I didn't.  Thus, the issues keep coming, and I keep reading them.  Yes, there are funny cartoons there, but not every essay and short story in the magazine is mood-uplifting.

Last night, it was an essay on Tibetans setting themselves on fire (sub. reqd.) that I read.  A depressing essay.  I don't avoid those depressing pieces, but I read them.  As I recently remarked to a friend, life is not simply about laughter and partying alone--not that I party either!

I would imagine that dying by burning oneself will be one of the most painful ways to die, if not the most painful one.  A few years ago, when my experiment in the kitchen resulted in the oil exploding and hot oil falling on my forearm, that was painful enough for me.  The inch-long scar that resulted reminds me to be ultra-careful in the kitchen.  That was one tiny part of my body.  And here we have Tibetans setting their entire bodies on fire.  Entire bodies!  Voluntarily!  Like this twenty-year old, back in January!

In the past two years, well over a hundred Tibetans have immolated themselves in protest against the Chinese rule.  The demonstrations have spread across the Tibetan plateau, both in Chinese provinces with significant Tibetan populations--Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu--and in the Tibet Autonomous Region.  In 2011, a dozen Tibetans set themselves ablaze--most of them monks or former monks of Kirti Monastery, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Sichuan.  Last year, more than eighty Tibetans--monks and nuns, farmers, nomads, students, restaurant workers, and at least one writer--burned to death.  The oldest was in his early sixties; the youngest was just fifteen.

How terrible!  Just awful!

Now, I don't ever imagine that every single person in Tibet is a Buddhist monk or a devout Buddhist.  As Brandon O'Neill noted a couple of years ago, there are plenty of regular Tibetans who love to wear cowboy hats and ride motorbikes too.  But, it is not right when Tibetans are prevented from deciding for themselves what they would like to do.

The self-immolation is "a sacrifice for a higher cause."

Many demand freedom, including religious freedom and the protection of Tibetan culture and language; others call more specifically for independence.  The most common sentiment is an appeal for the Dalai Lama's return to Tibet.

As Tsering Tashi was ablaze:

He is suffering death by putting his whole body onfire, and he's still calling out His Holiness the Dalai Lama's name.

I am no fan of religions, and nor am I a fan of any particular religious leader.  But, isn't it up to the individual people themselves to decide what ideas they would like to practice?  Repressing that liberty, which then leads to such terrible loss of lives, is surely a crime that the Chinese government cannot dismiss as mere propaganda, can it?

Meanwhile, in the place where the Buddha became the enlightened one, bombs exploded:

Four blasts took place inside the temple complex, three in a neighbouring monastery, and one each near a Buddha statue and a bus stand, Bihar police officials said on Sunday. 

The Hindu adds:

Based on a bag found in the temple premises, the police detained Vinod Mistri, resident of the Barachatti block in Gaya. “Vinod was picked up based on certain information. His photo identity card was found in the temple premises,” Abhayanand, Director General of Police, told reporters here. Deputy Inspector General of Police Nayyar Hasnain Khan told The Hindu that Vinod is a carpenter who made small furniture. 

The bag found contained a monk’s robe, a piece of paper with some mobile numbers, medical papers and a voter identity card belonging to Vinod. “He is not a monk. So the NIA is investigating why he was carrying the robe,” a police source told The Hindu.

If only we all knew how to get along, despite our differences!

Steve Jobs goes to heaven. Correction: is reincarnated as ...

The New Yorker cover was far from the original thinking that I expect from the cartoonists there.  Oh well, they can't deliver every time, I suppose.

Many cartoonists had played around with similar "i" themes ... except the following one that I came across:

Source

Now, that is some creative thinking.

Jobs, as many commentators duly noted, was a ruthless business guy as much as he was innovative. 

Last term, I think, I had my students watch a couple of video segments that were interviews with Mike Daisey, who in a serious and funny way makes us think about the ethical issues that we conveniently forget when we use an iPhone, or any smartphone, or any latest electronic gizmo for that matter.  Made students think, it seemed like.

We are all complicated mixed bags, but we seem to prefer clean and simple narratives like the nonexistent saintliness of Jobs.

Obama’s meeting with Dalia Lama is off for now

The time and energy wasted on non-issues such as whether the president forged his birth certificate makes us oblivious to flashing signals, some more urgent than others, from around the world.

Case in point: the remarkably under-reported news that President Obama has “quietly postponed an audience with the Dalai Lama until after he visits China in November.”

The Chicago Sun Times — the president’s hometown newspaper — notes that “White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrettt, who seemed to vanish at the end of last week, was actually dispatched to India on a delicate diplomatic mission: President Obama tapped her to meet with the exiled Tibetan religious leader, the Dalai Lama.”

Even the vice president’s visits to Iraq appear to be more transparent!

The postponement of the meeting confirms, yet again, the triumph of realpolitik over principles.

When we owe China more than $800 billion, perhaps we have no option other than to make sure that we do not upset our primary foreign lender.

However, the postponement is not without geopolitical complexities involving the United States, China and India.

Sino-Indian relations, which had been improving in the 1990s, have been on a downturn over the past couple of years.

The downturn has even resulted in very brief military incidents. One of the main sore points is over Arunachal Pradesh, a state in northeastern India. China has always claimed Arunachal Pradesh as its territory and considers it a part of Tibet.

The territorial boundary that China disputes — the MacMahon Line — dates back to 1914, before the independence of India and before the founding of the China we know today.

India became independent of Britain in 1947, and the People’s Republic of China came into existence in 1949. It can be argued that neither India nor China was party to the MacMahon Line, but both have been forced to coexist with that boundary in the rugged Himalayan terrain.

So, where does the Dalai Lama fit into this territorial dispute, even when he is in no way directly responsible for the recent tiffs between these two countries?

For one, the Dalai Lama has lived in northern India — in Dharmasala — ever since he fled Lhasa, Tibet, in 1959. The Dalai Lama’s escape path out of Lhasa went through Tawang, which is in Arunachal Pradesh and whose monastery is the second oldest after Lhasa’s.

A few years after his arrival in India, the Dalai Lama was requested by the Tawang Monastery to send a lama who would be qualified to be the abbot, and this further cemented his association with Tawang.

In 2008, when the Dalai Lama planned to visit Tawang, the Indian government prevented him from doing so because it did not want to upset the Chinese government, which considers this trip a political act by the “splittist” Dalai Lama.

This year, however, the Indian government has approved the Dalai Lama’s plans to visit Tawang in November, perhaps sensing that continuing to appease the Chinese government might be interpreted as a sign of weakness and could cloud its sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh.

Meanwhile, there have been reports of Chinese military incursions into Indian territories.

All of these things have concerned the Indian government so much that the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, was compelled to react, and promptly accused the media of blowing things out of proportion.

It was against such intense geopolitical backdrop that the Dalai Lama was scheduled to meet with Obama during the Dalai Lama’s visit to the United States in October. This meeting is now a no-go.

Of course, the story continues. In mid-November, Obama is scheduled to go to China on his first official visit, which is, ironically, about the same time as the Dalai Lama’s fifth visit to Tawang.

However, unlike the president, the Dalai Lama is not quite in control of his own calendar.

Buddhists — monks and laypeople alike — in India’s northeastern states have begun special prayers hoping that these would ensure the Dalai Lama’s visit.

Let us see if the prayers bear fruit. And, maybe, the Dalai Lama will even get to meet with Obama at the White House.

For The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Wednesday, Sep 23, 2009