I will be hosting an hour of election analysis, what it means to local Indian community, look at some of the hotly contested propositions in California and other relevant topics related to the election today. The show is from 7.30 am to 8.30 am PST, Wednesday Nov 5, in KZSU Stanford 90.1 FM. To listen live, click here. To call in with your comments (we need ‘em! ), call +1 650 723-9010 .
Yoichi Shimatsu breaks down the Tibet Protests, Freakanomics style, in an article in The Asian Week. The article sheds light on factors that at least I haven’t read elsewhere. Very informative.
The media often simplifies the unrest in Tibet to be all about Chinese oppression and Tibetans’ fight for freedom. There are far more complex factors involved, as Yoichi points out. I am interested in learning more about these economic and racial factors in play. If you come across any interesting essay, post the link in the comments below.
While Buddhists around the world may practice vegetarianism, red meat is essential to the Tibetan diet — especially for monks known as lamas — since it is the only effective means of transforming the abundant grass into protein. As is the case for workers in the meat industry worldwide, Tibetan herders and family farmers here are at the bottom rung of the economic ladder, receiving the least cash for the most hours worked.
Pastoral isolation leaves the herders open to undercutting by Muslim middlemen. Ten years ago, the price of a fat-tailed sheep was about US$14. Four years ago, as the newly constructed western highways were extended, the price tripled due to rising demand for lamb chops in wealthy cities of the distant Pacific Coast. This sudden boom led to encroachment by one group of herders onto the lands leased by other groups. Range wars erupted between odd coalitions of Tibetans, Mongols and Muslims.
In more recent years, huge feedlots supplied by American grain companies have sprung up in Inner Mongolia, the Shantung Peninsula and outside of Shanghai. Their purchasing agents ply the Muslim truckers with fistfuls of cash for shipments of thousands of live animals. With so much demand from the rich cities, meat became scarce in local markets, and food prices shot up.
Tibetans were buying a leg of lamb for the price of a whole animal, and few would ever stop to consider the inflated price of fuel and truck leasing for the Muslim middleman. In the first day of the Lhasa riots, most of the casualties of arson were Hui Muslim noodle restaurant workers, who migrated to the newly prosperous provincial capital over the past decade — just as Mexican immigrants have gone to major cities to work as dishwashers.