Re: Faustian bargains
BklynMagus wrote:
Doug writes:
Sorry, I only know what I read in books.
Better check on the books you read:
http://www.tibet.ca/en/wtnarchive/2001/8/30-2_1.html
Grunfeld also uses Bell’s statement that “slavery was not unknown in the Chumbi valley” to imply that slavery was a standard institution throughout Tibet. Once again Grunfeld does not include Bell’s subsequent remarks that the institution was then on the wane and that “only a dozen or two (slaves) remained”; and that “the slavery in the Chumbi valley was of a very mild type.”
Wow, that’s a relief.
As is this:
Which brings up the question, is Grunfeld’s book comparable to the works of revisionist historians like David Irving who claim that the holocaust had never happened, that the gas chambers had never existed, but were invented for British propaganda purposes and then picked up by Jews to extort German and American finance for Israel? On serious reflection, I don’t think such a comparison can be made. First of all David Irving is a real historian, whose works have been published by major publishers in Sweden, Germany and Macmillan in Britain, and not like Grunfeld’s book which was published by Zed Books in London, probably some left-wing propaganda outfit.
Funny, coming from a mouthpiece for a Tibet propaganda outfit.
I don’t see any refutation of the analysis of the social structure, however - a feudal society in which an impoverished mass supported a parasitical caste of priests. Should I conclude that Grunfeld basically got this right?
Doug