Hobohemian posted:

I bet Mao would have murdered all these loving bird nerd losers in the cultural revolution, so really was he that bad?

Electro-Boogie Jack posted:

You're seeing this through a Chinese-crafted lens that really distorts what you're looking at. Even ignoring the characterization of previous Tibetan rulers as 'abusive landlords' (and it is best for you that we ignore that characterization for now, because the whole story is a lot more complicated), no one is asking you to 'shed tears' for them. Instead, please consider the rest of the Tibetan population, which sustained horrific and bloody losses during the first decade of Chinese rule, unprecedented starvation and death during the second, and the annihilation of their cultural heritage during the third. Today they live in a police state far more pronounced than that in China proper, while Chinese development policies and economic hegemony keep most Tibetans in at least as precarious of a state as they ever held before China showed up.

The old Tibetan regimes needed to be overturned ad reworked, sure; but Tibetans were already working on different facets of that in the decades before the Chinese showed up- people like Phuntsok Wangyal forming the Tibetan Communist Party, the Pangdatsang family contemplating an invasion of U-Tsang using Khampa and Amdowa armies to remove the Ganden Phodrang government and the conservative monastic leadership, and the 13th Dalai Lama's attempts at modernization. The idea that this wasn't happening and that Tibetans wouldn't have eventually been able to improve their lot is an idea that comes squarely from one source- Beijing. And as bad as the old regimes were, you definitely didn't have scores of Tibetans self-immolating in protest against them. Like the other dude said, 'but old government bad' is rarely trotted out to defend contemporary human rights abuses elsewhere in the world- you should think about why this narrative is prevalent with Tibet today, and who designed it/ benefits from it.

For picture content- a row of nomad resettlement houses I saw in Amdo. Resettled nomads, who should be some of most grateful to the Party according to the 'abusive landlords/ modernizing Party' framing, have consistently been among the most active in resisting Chinese rule all the way from joining Chushi Gangdruk back in the '50s to organizing demonstrations, participating in protests, and sadly these days, self-immolating. The way Chinese rule has devalued them as people and reduced their prospects is a big part of why this is the case.



Here's a picture from Kumbum monastery earlier today- clearly Tibetans are still super upset about abusive landlords and all these Chinese troops are just there to make sure they don't tire themselves out singing and dancing praises to the Party

Free Market Mambo posted:

Tzinjao Unchained

Fojar38 posted:

he tried and got self-owned after killing all the sparrows and loving up the ecosystem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign

quote:

The masses of China were mobilized to eradicate the birds, and citizens took to banging pots and pans or beating drums to scare the birds from landing, forcing them to fly until they fell from the sky in exhaustion.

Tuxedo Gin posted:

loving laughing my goddamn rear end off over here imagining a billion poor chinese running around the countryside doing this:

Trochanter posted:

Rough Lobster posted:

Remember that old goon standby, "Who would win in a fight: a gorilla or a guy with a samurai sword?"

I wonder how many geese a guy can decapitate with a katana before they finally overwhelm him and gorge on his plump intestines.

Trochanter posted:

Mandarin ducks are cool

JaucheCharly posted:

Imagine trying to sleep while there's people banging pots all over. Sleep deprivation makes people do interesting things.

Sheep-Goats posted:

Imagine a din three times as bad as this and that's what it's like to sleep in China anyway most of the time.

Zzulu posted:

Did not know this duck existed. My duck knowledge is now improved

Rough Lobster posted:

Let's enjoy them while we can because chances are they'll be loving extinct in ten years.

Trochanter posted:

Mandarin ducks are cool

Rough Lobster posted:

Let's enjoy them while we can because chances are they'll be loving extinct in ten years.

BigBoss posted:

Nah, they've got them at Cabela's aka the equivalent of the British Museum for birds.

Monkey Fracas posted:

If your hotel is near a major-ish road then I hope you find car honking soothing

BattleCattle posted:

I'm imagining the british empire toppling countries just to steal their birds, and I'm okay with that.

BigBoss posted:

Nah, they've got them at Cabela's aka the equivalent of the British Museum for birds.

RocknRollaAyatollah posted:

Chinese minority policy is pretty much on par with American, Canadian, and Australian native policy. If someone honestly believes that the PRC is uplifting any of these peoples and improving their lives in meaningful ways they're on par with someone speaking praises of the reservation and modernizing the childish savage. The Tibetans have only exchanged the lash and yoke of the Tibetan landlord for the abject poverty of the PRC, a destruction of their traditional way of life, and a system of institutionalized racism that only allows them to be a pastoral herdsmen in a colorful costume.

Larry Parrish posted:

Hmm, yes, this is definitely what Americans do. We force native Americans to put on festivals and wear feathered headdresses and poo poo, because racism, not because tourists eat that poo poo up. Reservations are p hosed up but they're a shrinking relic of a bygone era when they aren't just a convenient loophole for casinos.

Larry Parrish posted:

Hmm, yes, this is definitely what Americans do. We force native Americans to put on festivals and wear feathered headdresses and poo poo, because racism, not because tourists eat that poo poo up. Reservations are p hosed up but they're a shrinking relic of a bygone era when they aren't just a convenient loophole for casinos.

Nuclear Pogostick posted:

nobody here is defending the treatment of native americans here, in any reasonable person's mind it's reprehensible

however china manages to be even worse, somehow, which is seriously impressive considering how bad the us has treated its native population

Zzulu posted:

I wish that someday China and America and Russia wipe eachother out completely. This is my dream, my deepest hope

Free Market Mambo posted:

Tzinjao Unchained

Trochanter posted:

Mandarin ducks are cool

Dizz posted:

How long until they become overhunted for their food and extinct?

quote:

BEIJING — “Under the Dome,” a searing documentary about China’s catastrophic air pollution, had hundreds of millions of views on Chinese websites within days of its release one week ago.

The country’s new environment minister compared it to “Silent Spring,” the landmark 1962 book that energized the environmental movement in the United States. Domestic and foreign journalists clamored to interview the filmmaker, a famous former television reporter, though she remained silent.

Then on Friday afternoon, the momentum over the video came to an abrupt halt, as major Chinese video websites deleted it under orders from the Communist Party’s central propaganda department.

...

Accretionist posted:

Accretionist posted: