Month: August 2010

China Sentences Wealthiest Tibetan to Life

The Times UK (subscription link) is reporting that Dorje Tashi, believed to be the wealthiest Tibetan in Tibet, has been sentenced to life in prison by the Chinese government. No charges have been disclosed, though it is suspected that Dorje Tashi is being targeted for political activities. His trial lasted only three days and his brother was also sentenced to six years in jail, again on unknown charges.

Dorje Tashi was arrested and held without charges after the spring 2008 national uprising; his brother was arrested shortly after and held as well.

What’s particularly notable with the Times’ report is this passage:

Dorje Tashi had many other business interests and was believed to have close links with the Chinese authorities in Tibet that had enabled him to build up his enterprises and which prompted many Tibetans to regard him as something of a turncoat.

Shortly after his arrest, reports surfaced that he had been held on charges of corruption. However, Tibetan sources said there were also rumours that, like many other well-off Tibetans, he had donated some of his wealth to monasteries or even to the Dalai Lama.

Such donations would have enraged the authorities after most of the main monasteries in and around Lhasa staged peaceful demonstrations in the days leading up to the March 14, 2008 riot.

Robbie Barnett, a Tibet expert at Columbia University, said the harsh sentence underlined talk in Tibet of a pattern or retribution against prosperous Tibetans suspected of giving money to monasteries.

He said: “It looks like a long-term drive among Tibet officials to oppose and criticise lay donations to monasteries. It is baffling because leading businessmen have always avoided politics as far as anyone has ever known and have benefited from the current Chinese economic system.”

This isn’t terribly different from other prominent cases we’ve seen over the last two years. Dorje Tashi had close ties to the occupying Chinese government and officialdom. He was a respected businessman who ran one of the most successful hotels in Lhasa. He had no history of public political action. And yet, he was detained and disappeared for over two years and even now, there is no clarity about what charges he faced and why he was convicted.

This is a fairly similar set of facts to the jailing and subsequent disappearance of Karma Samdrup, a prominent Tibetan environmentalist and philanthropist who was long considered to be a widely respected Tibetan with close ties to the Chinese government.

While there is similarity between Dorje Tashi and Karma Samdrup’s cases – prominent, wealthy, non-political Tibetans with close ties to the Chinese government – there is not the same degree of similarity to the cases of Tibetan artists and cultural figures who have recently been arrested. Some of the most prominent are the writer Shogdung, the musician Tashi Dhondup, the blogger Kunchok Tsephel, and the film maker Dhondup Wangchen. While these are very famous and prominent individuals, they were somewhat more openly political than what we know about Dorje Tashi and Karma Samdrup. These cultural figures have been first and foremost advocates for Tibetan culture. But the culture has become political, as Tibet is undergoing an intellectual and artistic Renaissance.

The common denominator in all of these cases is that the Chinese government is cracking down on any Tibetan individual who achieves prominence, even within the colonial system, and maintains a Tibetan identity. Cultural leadership and preservation of the Tibetan identity is a threat to the continued Chinese occupation of Tibet. As cultural outlets become more consistent avenues for expressions of political views, the Chinese government’s stranglehold on power will only be more threatened.

The problem with this is that culture should be an outlet that every nation has free and open recourse to, regardless of the content of the ideas expressed in song, poem, film, and art.  Cracking down on cultural figures, environmentalists and businessmen is the sign of a powerful dynamic in Tibet: ever-increasing sickness of Chinese rule and ever-increasing strength of the Tibetan identity. In the long run, it is exactly this dynamic that is most likely to bring change to Tibet.

Drugchu Landslide, Man-Made Disaster

It hasn’t been widely reported in the US media, but late last week there was massive flooding which caused a landslide in Drugchu, Amdo, Tibet (Chinese: Zhouqu, Gansu Province). Drugchu is in north eastern Tibet; the Tibet Action mapping project is keeping track of incoming reports (as well as of recent flooding in Ladakh, a Tibetan area of northern India). The latest update is that there are over 700 confirmed dead and over 1,000 people still missing.

It appears that many Tibetans on the ground believe this disaster to be directly or indirectly caused (or exacerbated) by large scale mining activities, damming and major deforestation in the region. Oiwan Lam at Global Voices Online has a report on this, based around work by Tibetan poet and blogger Woeser, who is combing Twitter for updates and responses.  Oiwan Lam documents a long history of warnings coming from Tibetans about the dangers of flooding and landslides in Drugchu from many construction projects and logging, as well as a lack of adequate notification systems for landslides and flooding. In short, this was not a natural disaster, but a man-made disaster, caused by the Chinese government’s reckless resource exploitation policies, which coincidentally displayed a massive disregard for the value of Tibetan life.

Not Bad, II

Elena Kagan was confirmed to the Supreme Court. That’s two women justices nominated and confirmed by President Obama. Kagan is clearly a mystery as far as how she will actually behave on the bench, so hopefully she turns out to be super liberal and forces everyone to marry a gay man, or something.

Will Republicans Fire Public Servants?

The Senate is voting this morning on a jobs bill that includes state funding for Medicaid, teachers and other public servants. The bill in question has been written to the specifications of alleged Republican moderates Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both from Maine. Spending has been cut from previous versions. Not only is it deficit neutral, it reduces the deficit (albeit by a small amount).  There is literally no remaining reason for Snowe and Collins to vote against it, other than being in lock-step with the Republican caucus and their desire to stop any legislation that will help working Americans.

The ad above is by Americans United for Change. I think it’s great. It’s about time Republicans pay a political price for their obstructionism, which is forcing their constituents to feel greater and greater economic pain.

I’m a fairly pessimistic person when it comes to expectations for Congress to get things done, but even the thought of Snowe and Collins rejecting this bill utterly appalls me.

Bruce Webb vs Paul Ryan

There’s a lot of talk lately about Republican Representative Paul Ryan and his intellectual chops, especially when it comes to the deficit and entitlement spending. Bruce Webb gives a serious look at Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future” (something it seems almost no media outlets have bothered to do) and basically tears it to shreds. Webb concludes:

Ryan Roadmap: Cut taxes on the rich, increase taxes on the poor. Now that is tax simplification we can all believe in! (Not).

Webb’s deconstruction is so thorough, a parenthetical “not” at the end isn’t sufficiently ironic.

Galbraith: Expand Social Security, Medicare

James Galbraith, one of the staunchest defenders of  Social Security, has an op-ed in The Daily Beast that is definitely worth a read for those trying to contextualize arguments about the economic crisis, job creation, entitlements, and those hawking deficit concerns.  A key point Galbraith makes is that we are not in an ordinary recession, but “We’ve suffered a major collapse of the financial system.” Despite this, Galbraith points out ” There simply is no funding problem for the U.S. government, and in the real world of financial markets, none is foreseen.” The best way out of the current unemployment troubles, Galbraith convincingly argues, is not by cutting but expanding Social Security and Medicare. Lowering the retirement age would allow millions of older workers to retire, creating new jobs for young workers while giving older workers a reliable stream of income for the rest of their lives in Social Security. Similar benefits exist for expanding access to Medicare for younger workers. Galbraith concludes:

Care for the elderly, energy, climate change, the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe, our decayed infrastructure, public health—these are real issues. Let’s deal with them. The “long-term budget deficit” is a phony problem, ginned up by politicians, some economists, and the historic enemies of Social Security and Medicare on Wall Street. For God’s sake, let’s not sacrifice our most successful social programs to the hysteria we’re hearing from them.

This sort of message is critically important. Galbraith has been key in banging the Address Real Problems drum, as have people like Bob Herbert, Duncan Black and Paul Krugman. Moreover, as the deficit hawking heats up, having a sensible frame to talk about growing, not shrinking, entitlements is really important. Galbraith is a persuasive advocate and a voice who should be amplified.

Is the Fed Scared?

This post at Economics of Contempt puts forth an interesting theory that the Fed isn’t taking more action, including trying something unorthodox, because they worry that politicians will harshly criticize them. Of course, as Economics of Contempt notes, if the Fed isn’t acting as they are able to as an independent body because of political fears, then the Fed really isn’t independent.

I’m not entirely comfortable with the version of history in the post which says the Fed was successful “bailing out AIG, establishing currency swap lines, supporting the money market funds.” Sure, they saved Wall Street, but unemployment has dramatically increased from 2008 to now — from 6.2% to 9.5%. If the economy has taken a massive hit in real terms, how well did the Fed succeed? Not well, as it created a depression.

Also, it’s a nice trick if it is the case that the Fed won’t act out of fear of being criticized of politicians. As we see with the deficit hawks, politicians must set policy out of fears of vengeful bond traders, while the Fed must avoid action for fear of what vengeful politicians might say.