Tibetan monasteries 'surrounded by soldiers'

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by DaShi
Given how China has been reacting to the Tibetan protests, I've lost faith in them, again.

Why? They've been very tolerant considering how the rioters have behaved.

[DaShi]

We don't know. They've blocked reporters from Tibet. Shut down all outside reports and then went on a campaign to vilify not only the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama, but the West as well. All violations of their Olympic promises. All signs of a repressive police state.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by aneeshm
How on Earth could an isolated little order of monks have done that?

The Roman empire was not destroyed by Christianity, it was destroyed by the internal decay that corruption and decadence brought about by a lack of accountability and checks and balances on the people with power.

What does that have to do with the effect of Christianity afterwords?

Almost any order is better than chaos.

Not when looked at over centuries. With chaos you have change.

They had their flaws - and monstrous flaws they were - but the preservative work they did during the periodic interregnums of total chaos that Europe underwent throughout the dark ages was absolutely invaluable in preserving European and Western civilisation as we know it. The Renaissance was made possible only because the tradition of Classical education had the patronage of the elite and the Church. When the elite was weakened or destroyed outright, or fell into decadence, as happened often enough in the Dark Ages, it was solely through Church patronage that a lot of the Classical world survived. Don't knock their contributions.

That's nuts! You give them credit for perserving knowledge while they kept the masses ignorant and oppressed. That's incredibly elitist and manipulative.

At any rate, I don't see any reason to compare them to the RCC. What we are talking about is the measure of oppression. Comparing them to the Romans doesn't really make your argument. They only thing I will say about it is that the church was more subtle in their manipulation of society than the brutish Romans.

The Church, too, underwent the same fate later. Power and a lack of accountability does that to everybody. It's what happened to the Romans, the Church, the Brahminical tradition in India, and too many other otherwise stabilising and consolidating traditions to name, and it happens to any state or system without an in-built balance of checks on the power of each node.

Errr... It happens when you are full of **** and you keep people ignorant and oppressed. That was what did them in. Don't you mistake that. There is no value to their society at all.

But I fear we stray far too off-topic. The point remains that whatever the Tibetan monks may have done in some past, that is so long ago, and so many people ago, that it makes really no sense to bring it up when discussing an atrocity being committed against them. Specially when considering that they have done nothing violent whatsoever.

Forget all ideology for a moment, Kid. It doesn't help in understanding, it's just a mental crutch. Doesn't it strike you that what is being done right now is just wrong?

Again, what are you talking about. From what I know there are riots going on right now. The rioters are violent and destructive. You said that the Chinese are starving monks, and you have also admitted to being very biased with this issue. So please explain.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by DaShi
We don't know. They've blocked reporters from Tibet. Shut down all outside reports and then went on a campaign to vilify not only the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama, but the West as well. All violations of their Olympic promises. All signs of a repressive police state.

The West clearly deserves it given the press coverage. And that's a bit hypocritical btw. The West vilifies China and then claims that China is vilifying the West. I don't blame the Chinese at all for not allowing Western reporters into the area.

But maybe you don't know that there is footage of the rioters and victims of the rioters coming forward.

[Dinner]

Riots are continuing despite the Chinese flooding Tibet with soldiers. It seems a lot of the locals are pissed off.

[asleepathewheel]

That's it, I'm selling my copy of Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games!

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Kidicious



That's nuts! You give them credit for perserving knowledge while they kept the masses ignorant and oppressed. That's incredibly elitist and manipulative.

You are wrong they do get the credit for that, monasteries for example did not hinder the spread of knowledge but helped it. A child from any backround could enter a moanstery and learn how to read or write. I fail to see how the church kept the masses ignorant up untill at least the 13th century, but by then the Middle Ages are almost over and the Dark Ages are history.

Keeping them oppressed? Please. The RCC did its fair bit since it was a land owner like the noblity. Also the the Church of England and all the other prostestant Churches that followed did the same as did the Eastern Orthodox church and as did the Caliphat. All organized religion becomes oppresive sooner rather than later.

In any case you overstate the power of the Church, since why weren't they able to get the Crusades right, or why weren't they able to complete the Counter reformation if they really did wield the power you say they did?

[C0ckney]

now, now, since when has kid let a little thing like the truth get in his way.

[Colon™]

BBC website 'unblocked in China'

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
You are wrong they do get the credit for that, monasteries for example did not hinder the spread of knowledge but helped it. A child from any backround could enter a moanstery and learn how to read or write. I fail to see how the church kept the masses ignorant up untill at least the 13th century, but by then the Middle Ages are almost over and the Dark Ages are history.

A child could learn to be a monk, but they didn't teach the masses to read and right. Everything was kept under their control.

Keeping them oppressed? Please. The RCC did its fair bit since it was a land owner like the noblity. Also the the Church of England and all the other prostestant Churches that followed did the same as did the Eastern Orthodox church and as did the Caliphat. All organized religion becomes oppresive sooner rather than later.

Thank you for restating my argument, but please don't pretend to be arguing against me when you do.

In any case you overstate the power of the Church, since why weren't they able to get the Crusades right, or why weren't they able to complete the Counter reformation if they really did wield the power you say they did?

Power to keep the masses divided into classes and believing in your fairy tales is plenty of power. That's what they really wanted, not particularly to kill brownies or anything else.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Originally posted by Colon™

BBC website 'unblocked in China'

The English language versions of several news websites have become gradually unblocked since 2001. Reuters used to be completely blocked, and New York Times and Washington Post as well. However, most of the main newspaper sources were unblocked in the early 2000s, as they rarely had a Chinese language component.

Reuters was unblocked sometime in 2004/5.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Heraclitus


You are wrong they do get the credit for that, monasteries for example did not hinder the spread of knowledge but helped it. A child from any backround could enter a moanstery and learn how to read or write. I fail to see how the church kept the masses ignorant up untill at least the 13th century, but by then the Middle Ages are almost over and the Dark Ages are history.

Keeping them oppressed? Please. The RCC did its fair bit since it was a land owner like the noblity. Also the the Church of England and all the other prostestant Churches that followed did the same as did the Eastern Orthodox church and as did the Caliphat. All organized religion becomes oppresive sooner rather than later.

In any case you overstate the power of the Church, since why weren't they able to get the Crusades right, or why weren't they able to complete the Counter reformation if they really did wield the power you say they did?

As long as you guys are talking about the Church and the dark ages it might be interesting to read a book called "How the Irish saved the world". It's actually about the very late Roman Empire period and the dark ages. Apparently the Romans sent several Christian missionaries to Ireland and Scotland in an attempt to "civilize" the barbarians there (St. Patrick was just one of the more remembered missionaries).

Any way, several Irish kings agreed to convert and to pay to build monasteries but only on the condition that Romans provided books in addition to the Bible (history, art, literature, etc) which these monks could then copy and distribute. Fast forward to the fall of the Roman Empire the early Pope of the dark ages were often German tribesmen who invaded Rome and converted but who really weren't culturally very civilized and even the ones who were acted rather barbaric including ordering all pre-Christian books burned.

The cool thing was that Celtic Church was actually independent of the RCC until around the 10th-11th centuries and they were very busy copying, teach, and reproducing ancient texts which the RCC itself had banned. In the middle dark ages the RCC actually invited Celtic Christian priests to set up monasteries in place like France, Germany, and Switzerland as part of the reconciliation process between the Celtic Church and the RCC. The Celtic Church (Basically Irish & Scottish with some adherents in Wales and Cornwall) spread a great deal of knowledge about the ancient world back to the continent. Today, Arabs get all the credit for "preserving" ancient knowledge but there have been several ancient texts found in Europe from ancient times (indicating the RCC's edicts didn't carry much weight in a lot of Europe during the dark ages), the same books were spread by the Celtic Church in a series of Monastaries all over western Europe, and the Eastern orthodoxed were never subject to the RCC's book burning edicts and you'd better bet the Byzantines knew their own history.

[Colon™]

Originally posted by Alinestra Covelia


The English language versions of several news websites have become gradually unblocked since 2001. Reuters used to be completely blocked, and New York Times and Washington Post as well. However, most of the main newspaper sources were unblocked in the early 2000s, as they rarely had a Chinese language component.

Reuters was unblocked sometime in 2004/5.

Don't you think it's an odd moment to be doing it?

[BeBMan]

Too bad they hadn't tinfoil hats in the middle ages

And only the rich guys could afford massive metal helmets

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Today, Arabs get all the credit for "preserving" ancient knowledge but there have been several ancient texts found in Europe from ancient times (indicating the RCC's edicts didn't carry much weight in a lot of Europe during the dark ages), the same books were spread by the Celtic Church in a series of Monastaries all over western Europe, and the Eastern orthodoxed were never subject to the RCC's book burning edicts and you'd better bet the Byzantines knew their own history.

True, Arabs certainly deserve some credit for preserving ancient knowledge, but not exclusively. Let's also not forget stuff like the Carolingian renaissance improving latin skills, developing the Caroline minuscule, copying ancient texts etc. Sure, it wasn't done for "the masses" rather for the religious and secular elites (like anywhere else at the time - it's not that they had universities for all those peasants under Arab or Byzantine rule), but it's kinda hard to have something like a modern mass education without the instruments for it, when everything has to be written and copied manually.