up from the fœtid Comment Sewers deep beneath the sidewalks of Ciudad Vleeptron

Tibetan Sand Mandala

A mandala is a cosmic diagram that represents the dwelling place or celestial mansion of a deity. Both the deity, who reside in the mandala and the mandala itself are recognized as pure expressions of Buddha's fully enlightened mind. Mandala can be visualized, painted or constructed from wood, precious jewels, rice, flower and so forth. Sand is considered to be a superb medium because of its number and the great skill required to create the mandala's exquisite details.

According to Tibetan Buddhist history, the purpose, meaning and the techniques involved in the spiritual art of the sand mandala painting were taught by Buddha Sakyamuni in the 6th century B. C. in India. Mandalas are created for rituals of initiation and for meditations; it is also created to purify the environment and its inhabitants to promote harmony in the world.

Image and text: Venerable Tenzin Yignyen, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York USA

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Posted by patwantstofreetibet to News, Weather, Mozart, Sports, Eurovision Love AEnema & Perverted Videogames from Vleeptron at 7/08/2006 06:07:15 PM
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Free Tibet ? Man, like, yeah, sounds cool man. Like, peace, love n harmony dude. The Beastie Boys are all for it so it must be cool.

Free Tibet, but how ? Tibet has been a part of China for the last 50 years, occupied just after the initial foudnding of the Peoples Republic of China, while your lads had a bigger problem in Korea (indirectly involvind China) and did not dare to taunt the Sleeping Dragon. Under the rule of Mao Tse Tung China (and therefore Tibet) remained isolated untill the early 80s.
At least to my knowledge Tibet has the status of a Special Development Province like Hong Kong. new houses are being built, the infrastructure is changing (that new railway is just part of the strategy to make Tibet more "chinese").China wants to make sure that the remaining Tibetans are becoming a voiceless minority. There is an underground opposition but they are having a hard time. A change cannot come from inside Tibet, and will not come from the outside.

China is the biggest and most important economical factor in the region, The Sleeping Dragons belly is full of US bonds and the current US administration (or the next one) will not even dare to raise the issue of Tibet. There will be no sanctions from the UN, otherwise hell wil break loose. His Holiness The Dalai Lama knows these facts and there is nothing he can do about it. I reckon he must be one of the saddest people on the planet. Tibet is in the tight grip of the Sleeping Dragon. Sad but True. Is it lo late ?

Free Tibet, yeah but how ? Any ideas anyone ? Just tell me and I tell you how we can cure cancer, Aids and solve the hunger problem

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Hey Hey Hey Welcome to the New! Improved!

Vleeptron_Z

Okay, Nostrabobus can't peer into the Future and get a Klar Perfekt answer to your question. The mists are very thick and cloudy in the old Heathkit Vacuum-Tube/Valve Crystal Ball (CB-33) today.

But through the thick mists, Nostrabobus can see Freedom for Tibet.

Consider this, much closer to you and to me than far-away Tibet. To you, maybe nine hours of driving, that close.

From the moment Little Bobby's brain came on-line around 1952, throughout Little Bobby's young life and education and then into Bob's young adulthood and Bob's middle age, one thing was Absolutely Certain to Every Expert and Educated Man and Woman:

Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia would forever be enslaved possessions of the Soviet Union. Everybody all over the world who even remembered that once these places had been free sovereign nations knew that now they were slave colonies and would be slave colonies forever. Anyone who thought that someday the Baltic States would be free was a certified loony. (And, if you lived in the Baltic States, a certified Counterrevolutionary Traitor on a slow train to the Gulag.)

There's a pathetic snapshot of this hopeless moment of eternal despair in John leCarre's 1980 novel "Smiley's People." (Also you can Rent The Wonderful DVD starring Alec Guinness as the Brit spy George Smiley, and in his last movie, Curd Jürgens (that's how he wanted it spelled), as an old Estonian army general now exiled in London.

Brit Intelligence ("The Circus") keeps a tiny community of geezer Baltic-States "freedom fighters" financially alive by paying them a pittance, but not with any hope whatsoever of ever getting Freedom for the Baltic States. Britain, like the USA, just acknowledges the Realpolitik. The Baltic States will be slave states forever.

But the West subsidizes these hopeless old Baltic refugees to keep making annoying trouble for the Soviet Union, and for their intelligence links and sources "on the ground" in the Baltic States.

Well. Guess what? The certified loonies were right. The Realpolitik Experts were wrong.

Hop the train to the Baltic States today. Those aren't Soviet flags on the public buildings. Those aren't even Russian flags.

Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia are as Free as Switzerland.

Wikipedia:

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[Estonia] was occupied by Soviet troops in June 1940, as a consequence of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The Estonian SSR was formed, which joined the Soviet Union. Many of its political and intellectual leaders were killed or deported to Soviet Union. The country was occupied by the Third Reich from 1941 to 1944, when Soviet forces reconquered it. A guerilla war against the Soviet authorities in Estonia was waged into the early 1950s by so called forest brothers (metsavennad) consisting mostly of Estonian veterans of both German and Finnish armies as well as civilians.

Estonia regained its independence on August 20, 1991, with the Singing Revolution and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The last Russian troops left on August 31, 1994, and Estonia joined NATO on March 29, 2004 and the European Union on May 1, 2004.

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1994 - 1940 = 54 years

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And you know I visited Prague in 1988. Soviet soldiers were carrying machine guns all over town, and they didn't look like they were packing their bags or making any arrangements to leave Prague and go home.

But they did. The Czech Republic is Free -- and so are about a dozen former Soviet Bloc countries that the Realpolitik Experts said would be slave satellites until the End Of Time.

Someday soon, the Myanmar Junta will be thrown out of power and Myanmar will return to being Burma again, and will be a democracy. I just can't tell you exactly how.

And someday Tibet will be free again. I just can't tell you exactly how.