If you were a white, I would believe what you said, because it would lend you an objective perspective. but since you yourself are a [fill in the blank], your credibility is dubious.

Just asking you to employ a little more logic and a little less chauvinism, whichever kind of chauvinism that might be that you do clearly have. That’s all. ‘I would believe you if you were white!’ What kind of racist BS is that!

“Without reading the original text by Professor Shakya, I might risk commenting out of context.”

You risked it. Give me a break dude, read his work before you have an opinion on the matter.

I don’t get how you know your making a mistake and then make it.

Without reading the original text by Professor Shakya, I might risk commenting out of context. I wasn’t sure what “racial prejudice” and “colonial masters” he was referring to. But I suspect he meant that of the Han Chinese over the Tibetan Chinese (well, Tibetans are Chinese becasue Tibet is still under PRC rule anyway, much like Asian American or Hispanic American). If the answer is positive, this so-called racial tension as he described did not come into the full play as is today as in the past several centuries when the Chinese Empire’s central goverment, aka His Majesty the Emperor himself, must approve the Living Buddha or the Dalai Lama’s political leadership status. It became a problem after the Communists took over, because Communists are atheist per se.

Now the Dala Lama himself was no angel. Under his rule, Tibetans were mostly peasant slaves owned by and working for the Potala Palace. Go count the human skull lamps that used to be widely used in the Tibetan Buddhist temples.

Because the West, particularly the U.S. which is astoundingly Christian (which I found disturbing because Christians seem to dominate the country’s politics today, from gay marriage to abortion rights to stem cells research), considers the atheist communist China a sore in the eye. Now it so happened the self-exiled Dalai Lama gave them yet another God-sent “cause” for a crusade against communism.

Now I’m not defending communism. I’m simply tyring to say there’s no absolute objectivism or purity in thinking. Everything is a matter of relativism, partially explained by the famous syaing “There is no permanent friends or enemy; there’s only permanent interest,” which is so true in international politics, because everyone sets off from where they are from. Nobody can be an exception.

I’m with you. Everytime I hear “well, history says…” or “according to history…” used in the service of contemporary political exigencies, I can’t help but cringe.