Recorded April 16, 2006
REALAUDIO
Continuing an examination of the Dalai Lama and some of the political forces with which he collaborates, this program focuses largely on the Tibet of old—before the Chinese invasion. Idealized as the ultimate manifestation of Buddhist wisdom on earth, the pre-invasion Tibet was anything but the earthly paradise the Dalai Lama and his associates claim that it was. In point of fact, Tibet was a brutal, theocratic feudal society, presided over by the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist prelates. Much of the population were serfs—actually little more than slaves. They had no rights to speak of, and were bound to the land owned by the religious leaders. Even the smallest of offenses was punished with extreme brutality—grisly torture was routine. It is not hard to see why the SS felt affinity for the Tibetan elite. (This is discussed at length in FTR#547.) The broadcast also highlights the bizarre sexual ritual that characterizes Tibetan Buddhism. This aspect of the Dalai Lama’s faith generates serious sexual abuse of both adults and children of both ages. The concluding part of the program reviews the Dalai Lama’s collaboration with Islamist and pan-Turkist separatists in Xinjiang province of China, as well as his long-standing association with elements of the CIA. The discussion of the Dalai Lama should be viewed in the context of a broader inquiry into covert action in Central Asia and other parts of what the Nazis referred to as “the Earth Island.”
Program Highlights Include: The Dalai Lama’s close association with Erkin Alptekin, a former employee of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and an apparent asset of elements of U.S. intelligence; the Dalai Lama’s connections to the CIA; the Dalai Lama’s link to Uighur elements associated with Al Qaeda; the Dalai Lama’s participation in the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, headed up by Karl von Habsburg, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the Dalai Lama’s recent trip to the U.S. in order to promote “peaceful understanding” of Islam.
1. The program begins with review of a relevant quote from Christopher Hitchens. Addressing a cognitive consideration central to grasping the enormous gap between the public perception of the Dalai Lama and the unsavory reality of his political connections and religious practices, the broadcast opens with a telling, relevant quote from Christopher Hitchens. Indeed, the Dalai Lama has his words and actions judged by his reputation, not the other way around. “ . . . The greatest triumph that modern PR can offer is the transcendent success of having your words and actions judged by your reputation, rather than the other way about. The ‘spiritual leader’ of Tibet has enjoyed this unassailable status for some time now, becoming a byword and synonym for saintly and ethereal values. Why this doesn’t put people on their guard I’ll never know. . . .”
(“His Material Highness” by Christopher Hitchens; Salon.com; 7/13/1998.)
2. Before presenting information about the sexual practices of Tantric Buddhism, the program reviews the professional credentials of the Trimondis [Herbert and Mariana Röttgen], whose work features prominently in the broadcasts dealing with the Dalai Lama. As we see, they were close professional, political and spiritual supporters of the Dalai Lama and metamorphosed into fierce critics, once they learned more of the Dalai Lama’s history and religious beliefs. The Trimondis also note that the Dalai Lama goes out of his way to deceive about his actual beliefs and agenda. The public face of the Dalai Lama is one with which no one could take issue. The reality of the Dalai Lama is something else, again. “ . . . STEPHENS: . . . How did you first come to know the Dalai Lama? TRIMONDI: We first met the XIV Dalai Lama in the eighties and became friends while publishing his writings in our publishing house, Trikont-Dianus-Verlag. While organizing international conferences with him and other famous speakers on interreligious and intercultural topics and specifically securing governmental level invitations to Germany and Austria for him, we began to seriously explore Tibetan Buddhism. However, after many years of extensive study and reflection, we seriously questioned some of the fundamental tenets of the Tantric Buddhism the Dalai Lama professed and eventually became one of his sharpest critics. . . Frankly speaking, the Dalai Lama has two faces. He makes his official contact with the West under the maxim of Mahayana Buddhism and then deftly assimilates the highest values and ideals of western culture (Christian, Jewish and humanist). On his present trip to America he has met with Muslims like Mohammed Ali, Jesuits at the University of San Francisco, political leaders from Republican and Democratic persuasions, and then will comfortably meet with ethicists and scientists at MIT and Harvard. Through diplomatic tolerance he wins agnostics as well as the hearts of unsuspecting Jews and Christians, to whom he preaches in the tongue of ‘a man of peace’ and as a human rights activists relates passages of ‘compassion, love, and non-violence’ from the ‘Sermon on the Mount.’ Nearly all of the speeches the Dalai Lama delivers in public are extremely tolerant, human and compassionate. You can only agree. And yet, there is another face that peeks out from behind the mask of goodness, charity and kindness, which gives one pause to think more deeply about the shadow of this ‘man of peace’. . . .”
(An interview with Victor and Victoria Trimondi by James C. Stephens; 9/11/2003.)
3. Next, the Trimondis describe the sexual ritualism associated with Tantric Buddhism, and how it often leads to abuse. As noted here, the abuse is a direct, institutional outgrowth of this particular brand of Buddhism. “TRIMONDI: The sexual practices of Buddhist Tantrism are not to be confused with normal sexual abuse by some Lamas. The latter also has been a great problem in the Buddhist communities, which were rocked by scandals caused by such prominent leaders as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, founder of Colorado’s Naropa University, who was accused of having sex with his women students. In 1993, 21 Western Buddhist teachers met the Dalai Lama in India and issued an open letter that lamented various teachers’ ‘sexual misconduct with their students, abuse of alcohol and drugs, misappropriation of funds and misuse of power.’ The group urged believers to confront teachers and publicize their misconduct. Here in Europe, one of the most well known and discussed cases involved the Scottish Buddhist June Campbell and the attempt of her teacher, the most honorable eighty year old Lama Kalu Rinpoche, to misuse her sexually. The 10. February 1999 headline of the British newspaper The Independent read: ‘I was a Tantric sex slave.’ But Campbell shows also in her confessional book Traveller in Space that the sexual misuse of women is not only a blameable attitude but that it is a central part of the Lamaist Tantric religion. The sexual magic practice exercised by a Lama with a woman has the specific goal to transmit the erotic and female energy into the spiritual and worldly power of the male partner. Such sexual rituals are the core of Tibetan Buddhism. Also in the secret higher initiations of the Kalachakra Tantra sexual magical rites take place. The ritual texts can be interpreted symbolically or real (!). Both are possible. The originals say that eleven-year-old girls may be used as sexual partners.” (Idem.)
4. Much of the program focuses on the nature of the theocratic society over which the Dalai Lamas presided before the Chinese invasion of that country. Far from the idealized, Buddhist “paradise” marketed by the Dalai Lama and his milieu, the Tibet of old was a brutal, feudal society. One should note that old Tibet was a theocracy, presided over by the prelates of the Buddhist hierarchy and headed up by the Dalai Lama himself. In FTR#547, we examined the attraction that Tibetan society had for the Nazi SS. In addition to the philosophical attraction they felt for the brand of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, the SS found the daily expressions of political power in Tibet to be consistent with their attitudes and practices. Examining what follows, one can see how the Tibetan nobility “with their ‘imperious, self-confident behavior’ and sharp cheekbones” were viewed as kindred spirits by the Nazis. The text passages that follow speak for themselves, and need no interpretive commentary. “ . . . But what of the Dalai Lama and the Tibet he presided over before the Chinese crackdown in 1959? It is widely held by many devout Buddhists that Old Tibet was a spiritually oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La. The Dalai Lama himself stated that ‘the pervasive influence of Buddhism’ in Tibet, ‘amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment.’ A reading of Tibet’s history suggests a different picture. In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas, as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet. Here is quite a historical irony: the first Dalai Lama was installed by a Chinese army. To elevate his authority beyond worldly challenge, the first Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, and acting in other ways deemed unfitting for an incarnate deity. For this he was done in by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized status as gods, five Dalai Lamas were murdered by their high priests or other courtiers.”
(“Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth” by Michael Parenti; 7/04.)
5. “Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that ‘a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches. . . . In addition, individual monks and lamas were able to accumulate great wealth through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending.’ Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries went mostly to the higher-ranking lamas, many of them scions of aristocratic families. Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. He also was a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet. Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some of its Western admirers as ‘a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.’ In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order and hunt down runaway serfs.” (Idem.)
6. “Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they became bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine. The monastic estates also conscripted impoverished peasant children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers. In Old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the ‘middle-class’ families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. A small minority were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. The greater part of the rural population—some 700,000 of an estimated total of 1,250,000—were serfs. Serfs and other peasants generally were little better than slaves. They went without schooling or medical care. They spent most of their time laboring for high-ranking lamas or for the secular landed aristocracy. Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners send them to work in a distant location. One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: ‘Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished.’ They ‘were just slaves without rights.’ Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a ‘liberation.’ He claimed that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain.” (Idem.)
7. “The serfs were under a lifetime bond to work the lord’s land—or the monastery’s land—without pay, to repair the lord’s houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. They were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child, and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. There were taxes for religious festivals, for singing, dancing, drumming, and bell ringing. People were taxed for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being placed into slavery sometimes for the rest of their lives. The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve upon being reborn. The rich and powerful of course treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.” (Idem.)
8. “In the Dalai Lama’s Tibet, torture and mutilation—including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation–were favored punishments inflicted upon runaway serfs and thieves. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: ‘When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion.’ Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then ‘left to God’ in the freezing night to die. ‘The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking,’ concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, and breaking off hands. There were instruments for slicing off kneecaps and heels, or hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling. The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master’s cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.” (Idem.)
9. “Early visitors to Tibet comment about the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, A. L. Waddell [sic, actual name: Waddell, L. A. (Laurence Austine)], 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, [F.] 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.’ . . .” (Idem.)
10. The program reviews the links of the Dalai Lama and his milieu to various intelligence agencies and some of the groups that they sponsor. Reviewing information presented in FTR#547, we note that the Dalai Lama himself is no stranger to elements of U.S. intelligence, specifically the CIA. “ . . .However, throughout the 1960’s, the Tibetan exile community was secretly pocketing $1.7 million from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama’s organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960’s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Llama’s annual payment from the CIA was $186,000. Indian intelligence also financed both him and other Tibetan exiles. He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked for the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment. . . .” (Idem.)
11. Gaining a broader view of the political milieu of which the Dalai Lama is a part, the broadcast notes that the Dalai Lama has collaborated with Islamists from among the Uighur population of Xinjiang province of China. The Uighurs–a largely Muslim population who speak a Turkic language—have been agitating for independence from China. (The Uighurs refer to Xinjiang as East or Eastern Turkestan.) With Xinjiang province being rich in petroleum, the Uighurs have had little trouble obtaining support from foreign intelligence services. For additional information about Uighur involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood/Al Qaeda milieu, see FTR#348. It should be noted that we are a long way from dealing with “Buddhists” here!! The Dalai Lama’s milieu is part of a larger Underground Reich virtual state. It is also important to bear in mind that the milieu of which the Dalai Lama is a part appears to focus on Central Asia—that part of the “Earth Island” seen by geopoliticians as key to controlling that land mass and, as a consequence, the world. “India should have reasons to be concerned over the Dalai Lama’s hobnobbing with the pan– Islamic elements in Xinjiang. One cannot avoid suspecting that the influence of these elements must have been behind his participation in a conference organized in Chennai last year by some elements, which have been acting as apologists for Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani military dictator, which was attended by a representative of the Huryiat of J&K and a large number of Pakistanis, some of them retired Pakistani military officers. The Dalai Lama’s set-up subsequently denied or played down some of the controversial remarks attributed to him at the conference. The Government of India should consider conveying to the Dalai Lama its unhappiness and concern over his association with pan-Islamic elements in Xinjiang.”
(“US & Terrorism in Xinjiang” by B. Raman; From the website of the South Asia Analysis Group [an Indian intelligence/national security think tank]; 7/02.)
12. More on the Uighur involvement with Al Qaeda: “10. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the Abu Sayyaf of the southern Philippines have been designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations under the US law of 1996, but not the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Party, though all the three are members of Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front For Jehad Against the USA and Israel. In initiating action, either for designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization or for action under the UN Security Council Resolution No, 1373 in respect of bank accounts, the US and the European Union have focused essentially on terrorist organizations, which are perceived by them as international in nature or which are seen as posing a threat to their nationals and interests. Terrorist organizations viewed by them as purely indigenous have been excluded. These multiple yardsticks have been used vis-a-vis China as well as India.” (Idem.)
13. Note that both the Islamist element of the Uighur independence movement and its secular allies have collaborated with the Dalai Lama. “7. Uighurs were found fighting with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. We are aware of credible reports that some Uighurs who were trained by al-Qaeda have returned to China. . . .24. The second similarity relates to the external causes of aggravation of the terrorist violence in Xinjiang. Just as in J & K, in Xinjiang too, there are two distinct terrorist/extremist movements– –one resorting to violence on ethnic grounds to assert the Uighur ethnic identity against the perceived Han Chinese domination and the other using religious and pan-Islamic arguments to justify violence for the establishment of an independent Islamic State. While the ethnic separatist elements have been the beneficiaries of sympathy and support from the Dalai Lama’s set-up and the Tibetan diaspora abroad, and the US, Taiwanese and Turkish intelligence agencies, the religious fundamentalist elements have been in receipt of support from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)-backed jehadi organizations in Pakistan, the Taliban and bin Laden’s International Islamic Front For Jehad Against the USA and Israel.” (Idem.)
14. According to the Raman paper, the CIA had close connections to Erkin Alptekin, a member of the board of the Dalai Lama foundation and a functionary of the movement to establish Xinjiang province of China as an independent (Muslim) Uighur state—East Turkestan. It should be noted that Alptekin is an operative of the Pan-Turkist movement, which is distinct from the Islamist element in the Uighur independence movement. The Pan-Turkist movement is discussed at length in RFA#’s 14 and 21, available from Spitfire. “25. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the USA had built up a network of contacts with the Uighur separatist elements and some of those, who had in the past worked for the Munich-based Radio Liberty of the CIA such as Erkin Alptekin, chairman of the Europe-based Eastern Turkestani Union and a close Uighur associate of the Dalai Lama, are now in the forefront of the ethnic separatist movement. . . .” (Idem.)
15. In addition to his background with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty—both closely connected to U.S. intelligence—Erkin Alptekin is a founder and key member of the UNPO, about which we will have more to say in weeks to come. “ERKIN ALPTEKIN is one of the foremost human rights advocates for the Uighur people of Eastern Turkestan, also known as the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. Mr. Alptekin was employed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty from 1971 to 1994. He is one of the founders of the Unrepresented Nations and People’s Organization (UNPO), and currently serves as its general secretary.”
(Excerpt from the list of the board of the Dalai Lama Foundation.)
16. Looking ahead to future discussions of the milieu to which the Dalai Lama belongs, the program highlights the head of the UNPO—Karl von Habsburg, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (For more about the Habsburgs and their fascist connections, see—among other programs—FTR#536.) Again, we are a long, long way from dealing with “Buddhists” here! With the Dalai Lama and his milieu, we appear to be looking at manifestations of the Underground Reich as a “virtual state”—a state without formal geographical borders. We should also note that Central Asia—the area that is the focal point of the Dalai Lama’s and UNPO’s support for Uighur separatist elements was viewed by geopoliticians as critical for maintaining control of the Earth Island. “The eldest son and heir of the dynasty is Karl (Karl’s website), who lives in Austria and has served in the Austrian army and was a member of the European Parliament, like his father, from 1996–1999. [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.] He has worked hard to keep the family in the public limelight, even hosting a popular television game show. He works quietly to change the Austrian laws of 1919 that forbid the Habsburgs from holding any political office and has often been mentioned as a possible Chancellor of the Austrian Republic. At this time he is the Generaldirektor of the UNPO (Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization). In 1993 Karl married Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza who is well known in European high society.”
(Entry for Karl von Habsburg.)
17. Recently, the Dalai Lama visited the United States in order to, in part, “promote understanding” of Islam on the part of Americans. An altogether laudable undertaking on the surface, this effort raises some questions. Is the Dalai Lama actually running interference for some of the Islamist elements with which he is associated? In this context, one should recall the advisory given by the Trimondis in paragraph #2. They warn that the Dalai Lama goes out of his way to be less than forthcoming about his true beliefs and agenda. “The Dalai Lama, a powerful icon for peace worldwide, will gather influential American Muslim leaders in San Francisco today to help refashion Islam’s image in the United States. Concerned that Muslims are unfairly demonized in American popular consciousness, the world-renowned Buddhist leader hopes to help show Islam in what he sees as its truest form, one of peace. . . .”
(“Dalai Lama Seeks to Improve image of Islam in U.S.” by Matthai Chakko Kuruvila; San Francisco Chronicle; 4/15/2006.)
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