That bastard, Dalai Lama!
Talking to someone about blogging today and I said the key to developing a presence on the web is having someone new to say and taking controversial positions. The Spiked Online crew are perhaps the best example in Britain, I said, because they’re known only for spouting hilarious, contrarian positions for its own sake.
Lo and behold, its editor Brendan O’Neill is on CIF today telling us what a conniving bastard the Dalai Lama is. Up next: Margaret Thatcher was right! Nelson Mandela is a terrorist!
| Post to del.icio.us |
Filed in: Humour, Media
I have read such things about the Dalai Llama before, and especially about power structures in Tibet under the rule of these Llamas I don’t think it is altogether untrue.
My next bland and non-controversial blog post will be Brendan O’Neill – Irrelevent Tosser.
That stuff just makes me love the Dalai Lama even more.
That just shows how fucking clueless O’Neill is. Check out the following from the Dalai Lama:
The fact is someone may well end up being reincarnated into that skinny white computer that O’Neill so mocks — perhaps even O’Neill himself in the future.
“Love: It’s Not All It Used To Be”
- Brendan O’Neill
“Love: It’s Not All It Used To Be”
- Brendan O’Neill
There have been a couple of more conventional “provocative” posts to CiF from O’Neill recently which make me think he’s aiming for a job writing “why oh why” columns for one of those tabloid newspapers which wants their readership to be mildly outraged but not too much (no “up the ‘RA” or defending Serbian concentration camps, thanks).
One of the problems that the RCP/Furedi cult has is that it has become too successful and high profile – most people now, on hearing that someone is associated with Spiked, the Institute of Ideas, Sense about Science, the Manifesto Club or any of the other front organisations, will know exactly what that person’s opinion is on any subject. They are constantly aiming at unpredictable provocation, but in practice they are utterly predictable and therefore very dull.
Not to mention that the amount of anti-environmentalism spewed by the O’Neill / Spiked / the RCP / Living Marxism / whatever they’re called this week makes them about the least genuinely communist people in existence.
Environmental problems such as climate change, pollution, resource depletion and destruction of ecosystems nearly always affect the world’s poorest people much worse than the rich.
Merits and downfalls of the various different types of communism aside, there is nothing communist about fucking the environment and shafting those who live there (duh… that’s everybody!), because ultimately to be anti-environment is to be anti-people, and especially anti the poorest people.
But that doesn’t stop them trying… like last year when in another stupid nonsensical article they tried to create an imaginary divide between the Climate Camp and the No Borders Camp.
No mention of the fact that it was actually many of the same people involved in organising and providing the infrastructure for both camps (I know some of the people who put considerable amounts of time into making both happen). But then they wouldn’t have known this, because they seem incapable of doing anything other than talking out of their arses. I really don’t know why they get give the platform to do it.
As far as I can tell, they’re a sort of bizarre mutation of Daily Mail reactionism – heading off on different tangents but every bit as odious, pompous, and just plain wrong.
Absolute gobshites, the lot of ‘em!
Tehelka did an issue on Tibet a few weeks ago that takes gives a rare insight into the protestors. There was a particularly good interview of one of the grassoot leaders, Tenzin Tsundue.
I think its gives a better understanding on the Dalai Lama from their perspective, though there is dissatisfaction with him they seem to deeply respect him though they want to approach China in a different way altogether.
http://www.tehelka.com/home/20080426/
The interview with Tenzin Tsundue – http://www.tehelka.com/story_main38.asp?filename=Ne260408lesslove.asp
The fact is someone may well end up being reincarnated into that skinny white computer
Agreed O’Neill is pretty clueless and this is a lazy piece of writing, but that’s an interesting use of the word ‘fact’. I would have thought ‘whimsical speculation’ was nearer the mark.