At The Edge

China's Tibet: the Past and the Present Emancipated serfs Become masters of their Homeland The peaceful liberation of Tibet, and the democratic reform and the establishment of the Tibet Autonomous Region had completely emancipated Tibetan people from the yoke of imperialism and centuries-old serfdom. the serfs accounted for 95% of the total. Tibetan population were liberated and became the masters of the country, of their land and their own self. - the opening lines from a four page special dated April 9, 2009, published by Hindustan Times Media Marketing Initiative for Business Partners and supplied right at the door step with the morning edition of Hindustan Times - the Newspaper. The rest of the four pages - with many happy pictures, impressive statics, colorful history and strange language - were just as sad and pathetic. No idea who got it published, what Business partners and why this special history lesson? Seems to be part of an media blitzkrieg at international level ...

Winter means: Lhasa Tibetan Refugee Market Long Live Indo-Tibet Friendship Free Tibet Thanks Visit Again And the other side reads: Note: Goods once sold will not be taken back Exchange within 2 days from sales date          (Conditions Apply)          A. Goods should be as good as it is on sales date          B. Availability of goods                                     THANKS

Flag of Tibet This was originally written as a response to the post Evaluating China’s Role in Tibet written by my friend Aniket . -0- The utter failure of the rebel Tibetan army in the 1960s due to lack of popular support. The CIA had trained over 2,000 Tibetan exiles in its facility in Colorado, and parachuted them into Tibet but over 90 per cent of them were captured or killed. It was similar to CIA’s Bay of Pigs misadventure in Cuba but less well known. I had no idea that it was so little well known that one could compare it with Bay of Pigs. CIA working closely with Gyalo Thondup, Dalai Lama’s elder brother, trained around three hundred Tibetan rebels on a remote Pacific Island of Saipan, and later at Camp Hale in Rocky Mountains in Colorado. These men, dressed in chubas and equipped with rifles, mortars, hand-cranked Morse radios and cyanide capsules, were parachuted into Tibet by night from US planes. These men were not going in to start as popular rebellion ...

Hugh Richardson (1905-2000), Britain’s last representative in Lhasa, was the first person to mention the phrase “the mind’s Tibet” to Patrick French. Richardson, who in a 1943 treaty gave up British extra-territorial rights in China, mentioned to Patrick French in a letter about “a quotation from Newbolt which I can’t find, ‘The mind’s Tibet where none has gone before.’” Patrick French describes this Tibet as: “A Tibet of the mind, a notion of pure, distant land, a place of personal escape, the heart of lightness. For some, it may be glimpsed through music, or fasting, or drugs, or prayer, or excessive exercise, or perfect love. It is the imaginary paradise, the cool correlative of the desert island with palms, coconuts and Gauguin’s women.” Patrick French looks from the origin of the line in all the writings of Henry Newbolt , but without any success until he comes across it in the September 1904 edition of the Monthly Review. It was here that the poem( which Patrick French finds...

Built on the banks of the Yamuna River, adjacent to the proposed Commonwealth Games village, the Akshardham Temple of Noida is famous for its laser show, musical fountains and also for being a suitable hang out place for lovelorn couples who are always running out of meeting places (a situation very unique to lovers in India). The Lord of the temple house is Bhagwan Swaminarayan, a god that not all its visitors know about of, or whose teachings they might religiously follow. He must be one among approximately (on last count) 330 million gods of Hinduism . Nevertheless, the temple is a huge draw among tourists and the locals, a fact evident from it’s ever jam packed parking. In summers, bare footed people burn their feet on its graphite and marble floor, just to marvel at the 141 feet house of god. None of this is surprising. The thing that is really surprising is: Communist, Godless/godless and “religion is poison” preaching People's Republic of China has invited the Swa...