The shock of a lifetime. Ever since I became interested in Tibet,
perhaps 50 years ago, or less, and represented in every photograph of
the Potala, have been the dozens upon dozens of structure of Tibetan
town life. Lhasa was a town that snuggled up very close the to high
slanted walls of the Potala. This morning, in Google Earth, Vikram
showed us some 2008 pictures of Lhasa/Potala, the high slanty walls
coming down to manicured ground, and what they called other monastic
buildings, but which is not true. All the houses and shops and tangle
and history and cattle and people of Lhasa have been erased from its
feet -- which are now, huge formal grounds, one could not tell of what,
but reminiscent, O most definitely reminiscent of The Forbidden City.
And these formal grounds went out to and beyond, a gigantic swath of a
highway, 6, perhaps 8, lanes wide from and across other main highways,
so that one could see for miles around that Lhasa, the ancient capital
of Tibet, the center of Tibetan life has been all but entirely erased,
their town their buildings their lanes and roads and paths, their yak
sheds and pig pens -- the mess and sprawl ofintense Tibetan life totally
totally
erased, to a grand picture postcard display of the Potala and roads
going by, at a distance, so that tourist can see it and its grandeur
without stopping, so that, as on a postcard, it can be displayed without
all the agony of the genocide of the Tibetan people even being
suggested. As if the Potala had been built that way as a great display
of wealth and power instead of the fountain head of the Tibetans
culture, the birthplace of their benign life and religion.
How do I know this? I have never been there, but I know it in my bone
for 200 or 300+ years of photographs and paintings, etc. have shown it
always mired in the higgly piggly buildings of a hand built city of the
hardworking self sustaining people of Tibet. So mired, it often
distressed me and I wished to see it a little set aside. Well,
apparently, so did the Chinese, so they slaughter not only the cultural
life of Tibet but undoubtedly thousands upon thousands of the people who
used to inhabit Lhasa. If you want to see this for yourself. Go to
Lhasa via Google Earth (dated 2008), and then check it against the
hundred thousand pictures of Tibet 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, 200 years ago.
The
Chinese genocide of the Tibetan people.
The erasure of Lhasa by the Chinese, is comparable to the
Talibans
blowing up of the Bamyan Buddhas -- only worse since it involves living
people and a living people's heritage. We read about these things in
the
20th-21st Century, but until now, we assume the day of unimaginable
cultural destruction is passed. But not so, raze their buildings
rewrite history.
If the will of 10,000 generations had gone into saving
what a treasurehouse Earth would be, instead we have bone yards, endless
bone yards, created by those who march in the footsteps of the Glorious
Warriors of Greece, all those who went out to kill each other and
destroy each others works. One of the most guilty of this art of war and
destruction is, of course, the Americans -- over there systematically
destroying 5,000 years of Iraqs wealth of buildings and
archaeological history so that
we, like
the Chinese, can steal their oil and mineral wealth.
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