Too many passwords ..... DialecticBlue is my Blog, Graeme Mills

Some readers will appreciate the irony.

.. the tendency of every national movement is towards the formation of national states, under which these requirements of modern capitalism are best satisfied. ... the national state is typical and normal for the capitalist period. Consequently, if we want to grasp the meaning of self-determination of nations ... by examining the historico-economic conditions of the national movements, we must inevitably reach the conclusion that the self-determination of nations means the political separation of these nations from alien national bodies, and the formation of an independent national state. ...[It] would be wrong to interpret the right to self-determination as meaning anything but the right to existence as a separate state.

Lenin, The Right of Nations to Self-Determination

Just because things have happened a certain way in the past does not mean that they have to happen that way again. China has no legal or moral right to commit cultural and religious genocide. Even if their claim to Tibet was legitimate (something I would strongly question under international law) their actions cannot be condoned.
The Dalai Lama is in an impossible position. His agreement with the Indian government, necessary to ensure the safety of his fellow Tibetans, does not allow him to speak out as he would wish.
I suggest that the letter by KM Gunn in today's (Tuesday) Australian be read and acted upon. The Chinese need to be shown that their behaviour is unacceptable and re-locating the Olympics (however difficult) is about the only way that the average Chinese will even find out there is a problem in Tibet.
While we sit around saying how terrible it is and kowtowing to the Chinese things can only get worse. They can only get better if we act - but, as KM Gunn said in the letter, we are only under economic coercion and not physical violence. We should be deeply ashamed of ourselves, our greed and our failure to act.

Yindin. I enjoyed your post. If we follow the logic of the article, we Poms brought you folk religious enlightenment, medicines, a public health system and motor cars, just like Mao and his Han Chinese did to the Tibetans, and you should be very, very grateful and it was very wrong for your people to have even considered fighting back. But I'd rather settle for a beer with you these days.

I guess the article could also support a Han Chinese claim to Vietnam, which was populated at some distant time in BC by the Viets from southern (Nam) China, and who were doing well till 232 BC or thereabouts when the Han Chinese invaded and ran the place till 939AD when the Viets kicked them out. That's 1100 years folks, and surely justifies China invading Vietnam today! After some abortive attempts by Chinese and Mongol armies to re-occupy VN in the Middle Ages, they backed off till 1978, when they took another clobbering from the Vietnamese.

Well, the Vietnam experience means that length of occupancy and arranged marriages do not an argument for colonialism make, and if the Tibetans want the Han Chinese out, maybe they should get out. However, I won't let that apply to me in Australia.

I think Lenin got it right. Tibet has the right to self-determination and socialists should support that.
In fact a victory for Tibet would be a defeat for Chinese imperialism and a step forward on the road to liberation.

The Tibetans can't do that on their own. They need Han allies, and the largest and most powerful group that can overthrow the regime is Chinese workers. For Tibet to be free the resistance movement must make links to and ally with that workers movement.

Otherwise I fear that they will not learn the lssons for the future as their present leadership in Tibet and other provinces is rounded up and executed.

Don't stick your 2 cents worth with what you don't understand. Again, its religion! The world is still growing up and the best thing you can do is, keep your nose out of it. Back too our corners and sort out our own domestic problems, and that's a fact! I can see the world is loosing it. So what is the answer? Let me give you this! The harder we fight, the feeling of distances we will feel and the only thing that will come of it, that we have lost the feeling of the natural world. A bit deep for some, but we are all sick and tired of it, and that's also a fact!

To be well balance is a gift, just look thought the s-it, and we are! all bothers in arms.

A door will always open, if you let it be.