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March 21, 2008
US House Speaker slams Saudi ‘oppression’ in Dammam

QOM, Iran (RBN) –
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slammed Saudi "oppression" in the Saudi Eastern Province on Thursday as thousands of Shia-Saudi exiles cheered her arrival in this Iranian town to meet Ayatollah Nimr al Nimr.

In a trip that has angered Saudi officials, she flew into
Qom, seat of the Shia-Saudi government-in-exile, to pay the first
high-level call on the spiritual icon after anti-Sunni riots erupted in Dammam, the capital of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, nearly two weeks ago.

"Speaking for myself, I would say if freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against Saudi Arabia’s
oppression in the Eastern Province, we have lost our moral authority to speak on
behalf of human rights anywhere in the world," said Pelosi, draped in a
golden scarf given to her by Ayatollah Nimr al Nimr.

"The situation in the Eastern Province is a challenge to the conscience of the world.
What is happening, the world needs to know," she told the Ayatollah,
exiled Shia-Saudi leaders and thousands of refugees who roared with
approval.

"We are with you to meet that challenge. We are with you in this
challenge," she said to deafening applause from the crowd waving
Shia-Saudi and US flags.

The northern mountain town was jammed with crowds of refugees, some
with children hoisted on their shoulders, and black-turbaned imans. The
streets were festooned with banners welcoming US support, proclaiming
"American-Shia-Saudi Friendship" and "Free the Eastern Province."

Pelosi’s comments drew a sharp response from Saudi-Arabia’s ambassador to Iran Osama bin Ahmad Al-Sonosi, who said "no country, organisation or person" should "take any irresponsible act or say irresponsible words."

Background
Source

Posted by b on March 21, 2008 at 16:05 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Michael Parenti confirms what I have written about Tibet and the rule of the theocratic lamas.
Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth

Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O’Connor, observed that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal,” while the people are “oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft.” Tibetan rulers “invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition” among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, “The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. . . . The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth.”24 As much as we might wish otherwise, feudal theocratic Tibet was a far cry from the romanticized Shangri La so enthusiastically nurtured by Buddhism’s western proselytes.
…
One common complaint among Buddhist followers in the West is that Tibet’s religious culture is being undermined by the Chinese occupation. To some extent this seems to be the case. Many of the monasteries are closed, and much of the theocracy seems to have passed into history. Whether Chinese rule has brought betterment or disaster is not the central issue here. The question is what kind of country was old Tibet. What I am disputing is the supposedly pristine spiritual nature of that pre-invasion culture. We can advocate religious freedom and independence for a new Tibet without having to embrace the mythology about old Tibet. Tibetan feudalism was cloaked in Buddhism, but the two are not to be equated. In reality, old Tibet was not a Paradise Lost. It was a retrograde repressive theocracy of extreme privilege and poverty, a long way from Shangri-La.

It is long, but well sourced and worth your time.
Maybe Pelosi should give it some though? Na …

Posted by: b | Mar 21 2008 17:36 utc | 1

b
Through mankind’s evolution on earth, the conquering of one tribe or people over another is a constant theme. Paradise Lost is a dream. Deep in man’s genes is a compulsion to fight against a foreign oppressor. Tibet is no different. The Han are conquering the Tibetan Plateau. The Tibetans could be Christian or Muslim or Animalists but they will fight the Han until placed in reservations. This is bed rock reason that McCain’s war will last hundreds of years or until the last of American troops are withdrawn. Each new generation of Iraqis will be born with the need to drive out the foreign Infidels.

Posted by: VietnamVet | Mar 21 2008 19:29 utc | 2

american legislators – have no right to speak of “freedom loving people” – for they are not
“moral authority” – for they posses none

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 21 2008 20:05 utc | 3

but it must be sd b that china has behaved in the most stupid & melodramatic manner to something that was neither an insurrection or a threat to state power.
the comrades have very little class when it comes to dealing with opposition – it is so heavy handed. in hong kong for example the principal dissidents are marxists & are marginal – yet they are treated with a melodrama worthy of bad english theatre or of thugwriters like david mamet

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 21 2008 20:33 utc | 4

one only need to read the history & the testimonies of the miniscule ‘red orchestra’ executed by the nazis to understand – what “freedom loving people” & “moral authority” signifies
u s imperialism as an idea & as a practice possess neither one or the other
it possesses what the ss possessed brute power, craven impulse & inestimable greed

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 21 2008 21:47 utc | 5

I’m trying to reconcile this quote from Pelosi with the exat same words applied to Tibet in the link below. (the link may in fact not work; its from Americablog)

Posted by: DonS | Mar 21 2008 23:36 utc | 6

link didn’t work. Here’s the vital info:
http://www.americablog.com/2008/03/pelosi-speaks-out-on-tibet.html

Posted by: DonS | Mar 21 2008 23:38 utc | 7

Maybe, I guess, b is doing a bit of a parody, no?

Posted by: DonS | Mar 22 2008 0:02 utc | 8

Strained parody, it is.
It’s not that I have any nostalgia for the bad old days, in Tibet or elsewhere. Nor can I think of many nice things to say about Nancy “Impeachment is off the table” Pelosi. I just don’t find the Saudi Arabia analogy particularly illuminating.
What is wrong about speaking out against oppression anyway? I guess the point is that one shouldn’t denouncing one tyrant only to play into the hands of another tyrant. But the Dalai Lama isn’t running much of anything these days, and he isn’t likely to. So, to me, this looks like human rights pressure on China and therefore probably a good thing.
As long as the international community doesn’t bust a gut laughing about Americans, of all people, pushing human rights.

Posted by: Voting Present | Mar 22 2008 4:53 utc | 9

As long as the international community doesn’t bust a gut laughing about Americans, of all people, pushing human rights.
I guess that was my point. Pelosi worshipping one leader of a feudal theocraty (and CIA man) who’s folks just killed some Chinese in Tibet, while she would never dare to the same thing for any Shia muslim against Saudi Arabia.
It is this very selectived “outrage” …

Posted by: b | Mar 22 2008 5:56 utc | 10

Voting Present said “… bust a gut laughing about Americans, of all people, pushing human rights.”
The stain of being born an American strikes again at Moon of Alabama.
I am an American. And believe it or not, many of us, probably millions of Americans, are pushing for human rights.
I hope the entire international community isn’t busting a gut laughing at us.
Please be a little more specific with your prejudices.

Posted by: Rick | Mar 22 2008 16:12 utc | 11

China has perceived Tibet as part of Chinese territory since the eighteenth century. Until the 1950s, however, Tibet remained largely untouched by China and enjoyed a virtual independence of Beijing.Is China’s current infiltration of Han into Tibet, and subjugation of that land, and incorporation of it fully into the Chinese national territory, really any different a process to the USA’s takeover of the Hispanic territories that were until 1846 to 1848 were part of Mexico? Indeed, the whole gradual settling of North America at the expense of the native Aamericans and hispanics by anglo-whites from the eastern seaboard through the nineteenth century is surely basically the same imperialistic expansion by a modern urban-industrial nation state into the lands of a more archaic and feudal/tribal society. The Chinese no doubt see it as their manifest destiny to dominate and settle and bring civilisation to East Asia much as the US did to Arizona and California and Utah and other regions in the west and south west. The monks and lamas forlornly resisting the inexorable advance of Han civilisation are the modern counterparts of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo and Cochise.

Posted by: Mike | Mar 22 2008 19:58 utc | 12

The Tibetans will get as much real help from the outside world as the Lakota Indians did at Wounded Knee in 1890. Their resistance is futile.

Posted by: mike | Mar 22 2008 20:05 utc | 13

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