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Daily Archives: August 18, 2009

Lhasa Beer USA

On August 17 2009 Tibettruth received a response from the Lhasa Beer USA company http://www.lhasabeerusa.com/about responding to our post. An official named as J Casilo replied

“Thank you for your message and concern about alcoholism and other issues regarding Tibet. There is one thing you may not understand and that is that Lhasa Beer USA is a completely independent company from the Tibet Lhasa Brewery Company Ltd. of Tibet. We are based in the US and hold no interest in the brewery whatsoever and they none in this company. We simply buy beer from the brewery and sell it here. Furthermore we too share your concerns for the welfare of the people of Tibet. Toward that end we are dedicating 10% of our profits, on a permanent and ongoing basis, toward philanthropic efforts in Tibet”

J Casilo then went on to kindly invite Tibettruth to arrange a telephone conversation to discuss such issues, not something that can be explored in any great depth over a telephone line, so instead we have sent (today August 18) Lhasa Beer USA an email detailing our concerns. Here is that email:

Dear Lhasa Beer USA,

We received your email and note your comments.

This issue was brought to our attention by a number of Tibettruth subscribers in California, New York, New Mexico and Virginia, they are concerned that a company based in the home of justice, democracy, and freedom should choose to import products from inside Chinese-occupied Tibet. Perhaps you will be aware that a commercial enterprise as prominent as the Lhasa Beer Limited Company can only function with the sanction of the communist Chinese regime. Thus, in associating so closely with that company your business is (however much this may seem uncomfortable reading) collaborating with an authority, responsible for the violent suppression of Tibetan culture, and a range of human rights violations, including a policy of forced sterilizations.

Now while you refer to your website as being sympathetic and supportive of Tibetan culture, the wording featured there, which is largely extenuating and vague, makes no reference to the harrowing reality faced by Tibetans http://www.lhasabeerusa.com/tibet We do note that you feature a list of Tibet-related statistics, http://www.lhasabeerusa.com/statistics-about-tibet which of course are very worrying, however your company chooses not to mention what imperialist forces are causing such inequalities and deprivation. Imagine describing the crippling poverty, which existed during the 1970s in the camps of Soweto, without reference to the repressive policies of the South African Apartheid Regime!

It is biased and selective and distorts the truth about what has placed Tibetans in such a position by not exposing what is actually threatening Tibetan culture. Namely the occupying communist Chinese authority, its paramilitary stormtroopers and the ongoing colonization of Tibet, which is part of a policy designed to Sinocise Tibet forever. Now anyone visiting your website would not easily extract that understanding from the text you present there. Perhaps you are concerned that revealing such facts would negatively impact upon your profits?

Which raises questions about business making compromises when dealing with odious and bloodstained states such as communist China, does a company decide to ignore or soft-peddle on contentious and sensitive issues, such as human rights, and the oppression of a people when trading with China for fear of losing business? In the case of Lhasa Beer USA that question may have a particular resonance?

It is difficult to conceive that your business entered into a trading relationship with the Lhasa Beer Limited Company unaware of the circumstances inside Tibet, and ignorant that in establishing that business partnership you would be linking your company to oppression, violence and human rights abuse. How can any ethical and responsible enterprise be comfortable with such a negative and troubling linkage? As was pointed out in the original post, how would your company head, Mr. Witz, if coming from Jewish ancestry, have felt about an American businessman importing and promoting Polish beer produced in Nazi-Occupied Poland?

Anyone with even a limited understanding of what is happening in Tibet will recognize a propaganda exercise when they see it, and it has not escaped our attention, nor that of a number of our subscribers, that China’s Ministry of Propaganda has been very careful to feature the Lhasa Beer Limited Company http://english.chinatibetnews.com/news/Business/2009-06/12/content_258602.htm and the fact that its exporting to the United States as yet another exercise in disinformation. To create the illusion of a prosperous and contented Tibet. Even the imagery on the label has been crafted to convey that lie, and maybe you will note that the dominant color used just happens to be the same color scheme as communist China’s national flag! Every bottle sold in California is spreading such distortions.

Apart from these grave considerations, from which your company cannot absolve itself entirely, we have to remind you that inside Tibet the very beer you import, along with a freely available supply of other cheap alcohol, is used as tool of oppression by communist China to undermine Tibetan culture and family. As we made clear, alcoholism is reaching worrying levels among Tibetans, no doubt much to the delight of communist China, fuelled in part by industrialized supplies of beer, such as produced by your supplier, the Lhasa Beer Limited Company.

We recognize that your company has established links with a number of Tibet-related Non-Governmental- Organizations, and declares that a small percentage of your profit is directed towards good-works for Tibetans. While this is to be acknowledged such steps do not mitigate against the serious questions raised by your active association with the Lhasa Beer Limited Company, and the somewhat misleading nature of your website’s description of Tibet.

As an objective naturally we would urge you to reconsider your association with that company, however as a first step, since by your own words “Lhasa Beer USA is a completely independent company from the Tibet Lhasa Brewery Company Ltd. of Tibet” perhaps you will re-write the website to include issues of human rights and cultural oppression, which characterizes life inside the occupied nation you import your no doubt profitable product from.

Editor-Tibettruth

Note: Despite our efforts to establish a constructive communication with Lhasa Beer USA all our emails a being being returned as unread. We have decided therefore to post our response on the Blog.

13 Comments

Posted by tibettruth on August 18, 2009 in News Item

Cultural Vultures

18 Aug

Capitalizing From Tibetan Bones

Image:losgazquez

There are many cultural vultures feeding off the corpse of Tibet, all happily exploiting the name, mythology, and glamor that has been associated with Tibet and exerted such a hold on the popular imagination, Having lost Atlantis, Avalon, and Tir Na Nog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%ADr_na_n%C3%93g it seemed western culture discovered a new spiritual paradise when 19th Century European esotericists came back with incredible tales of the hidden land of Shambala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambhala with its exotic monastaries, and accounts of demons and magic.

Once the pens of Madame Blavatsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Blavatsky and Alexandra David Neel http://www.mysteriouspeople.com/Alex_David-Neel.htm had scratched details of their personal phantoms and invisible ‘masters’ into their notebooks, Tibet was consigned to the realm of myth. It subsequently attracted all sort of fantastic attention and became the spiritual location for a number of fanciful ideologies.

Shambhala-Agartha Supposed Secret Spirtual Center

Since the smoke-and-mirror esoterics of that time the appetite for the mythical alternative has lurked in the background of the western mind, intimidated by the cold logic of scientific reasoning, but never completely subjugated. Western understanding of Tibetan culture carries such baggage, the view obscured by a prism that divides Tibet’s light into an exotic array of esoteric and occult fascination. Clearly there is some perceived need being satisfied here, and it seems we do not mind, if the very culture we are bewitched by, is exploited and distorted, as long as it supports our chosen mythology.

Take for example the curious case of the so-called Tibetan Singing Bowl an item which has become firmly associated with Tibet, thanks largely to the unlimited reaches of the Internet and the claims of self-professed healers and diviners who capitalized on the hunger for all things Tibetan. These first appeared in the West around the late 1980s, having been bought in the Bazaars of Kathmandu where, ever keen to drain money from credulous tourists, Nepali traders had long been fabricating and selling items as ‘Tibetan’.

About As Tibetan As Mickey Mouse

Yet these metal resonators, which appear in the Shinto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzu and Buddhist tradition of Japan, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rin_gong_at_Kiyomizu-dera,_Kyoto.JPG are not featured in Tibetan religious ritual, as revealed by the singular lack of any reference to their useage, in either Tibetan Buddhist or Bon sources. However, never let the facts obstruct a good business opportunity and the marketable value of these alloyed interlopers soon made themselves apparent not only to Nepali traders, but Tibetans too, who in selling such bowls sustained the fiction, and unwittingly credited them as being a genuine part of Tibetan culture. So the seed was planted.

Nourished by a Western hunger for the exotic, it has flourished into a veritable industry, a full-blown therapy with accredited courses and qualifications. Transformed into a tool for meditation, healing and self -discovery these bowls are now manufactured in crystal (as if the original metal-alloy was not sacred enough) and carry the stamps of Buddhist icons and Tibetan scripts to add some sense of authenticity. At a prestigious cultural exhibition that was displaying never-before-seen Tibetan artifacts, one practitioner was charging $100 to cleanse people of ‘negative energies’ by performing a so-called traditional singing-bowl ceremony. The client lay on the floor with a number of varying-sized bowls placed on Chakra points, while listening to the multi-toned whine of a nearby bowl.

Image:courant

All very colorful, and no doubt the person felt much better for the experience, yet it has absolutely nothing to do with Tibet, but that does not raise any concern with those seeking to profit from what they choose to believe is a Tibetan tradition, nor anyone else who cares more for the illusion than for Tibet’s genuine, yet eroding culture.

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