Tell it like it is

Losar is underway and the NYT and Atimes marked the Tibetan New Year with stories about the seething people of Tibet, pinned down by the boot of Communist China.

Kent Ewing in the Atimes wants to know when the policy will change. He hits on the real deal in Tibet briefly, way down in his article:

"... Unless, of course, Beijing succeeds in virtually wiping out its cultural and religious heritage - and that would be a far greater tragedy."

That is exactly what is going down. The Chinese are learning from the Americans. What did the US do to the natives:

Your god? a wimp, worship ours or die!
Your language? primitive, speak ours or die!
Your way of life? laughable, become us or die!

And this is exactly what China wants to have happen in Tibet. They don't give two shits about the cultural legacy of 6 million nomads the West seems to love so much. Shit there are more people in Chengdu then in all of Tibet. China want them all to become Han or die. Period. The only thing that will change this inevitable death by "boa constrictor" would be a Holocaust, eliciting enough guilt that the international community steps in and makes another Israel-Gaza-West Bank strip of death. But Chinese aren't Palestinians and the Tibetan diaspora has a long way to go before they can match the Jewish Lobby.

The best Tibetans can hope for is the cultural circus that surrounds their most beautiful spots and the dirty money that comes with it. The US is indeed the template for all things these days.

The Himalayas are forbidding. Perhaps the Tibetan legacy will live on in the deepest most hidden valleys and when the world collapses a few years from now, Tibetans will finally be free.