Dalai Lama

Sen eftermiddag i en studio på Kungsholmen. “Får vi se ett rejält smajl nu”, säger fotografen. ”Visa tänderna”. Nej tack, tänker jag, och ger honom i stället ett återhållet Mona Lisa-leende. Dels för att jag inte kan le på beställning, dels för att min undre tandrad inte är särskilt bildvänlig. Inte alls faktiskt, det ser ut som någon suttit på ett berg och kastat ner Tulotabletter i tandköttet. Allt är huller om buller. Om jag vuxit upp med 70-talistföräldrar hade jag garanterat haft en tågräls i käften under halva grundskolan, men 40-talisterna var inte lika petiga med tandestetiken. ”Kom igen nu, du vet väl att ett gott skratt förlänger livet”, fortsätter den envisa plåtisen. Ja, det är jag fullt medveten om. Ett riktigt gapskratt förbättrar intaget av syrerik luft och ökar hjärnas frisättning av endorfiner. Mindre stress, starkare immunsystem. Vet allt det där och är helt enig med de som hävdar att skrattet är själens stötdämpare. ”Visa tänderna” är för övrigt ett av Dalai Lamas favoritmantran. Tibetanernas andlige ledare vill att man ska flabba ordentligt inför varandra. Inga halvdana, tvetydiga smil, utan rediga hästgarv där man blottar osedligt mycket tandkött. Fotografen provar att skratta själv, ett hyfsat trovärdigt fejkgarv, för att inspirera mig. Skratt är som bekant smittsamt. ”When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you”, som Louis Armstrong rosslade fram. Våra spegelneuroner – ett slags nervceller som avger signaler både när vi själva utför en handling och när vi ser någon annan göra samma sak – innebär att vi kan börja skratta hejdlöst när kompisen gör det, även om vi egentligen inte fattat skämtet. Men det funkar inte på mig. Inte med en kamera i ansiktet. Har man en ful tandrad så har man. Då håller man inte på och okynnesskrattar hur som helst. Det är inget komplex, jag känner mig inte vanvårdad, men de undre gaddarna har haft en trång tillvaro och resultatet av det gör sig bäst dolt bakom underläppen. Märker att fotografen börjar tröttna på mig. Han gäspar stort. Då händer det – jag öppnar munnen på vid gavel och gäspar jag också. Det är inte bara skratt som är smittsamt. Mina tips Se: Bakom varje man, som återigen bevisar att restaurangkök är en bra spelplats för drama. Drick: Ett skolexempel på en god syrah.
Kolla in: Smyckesdrottningen Maria Nilsdotters splitternya linje Romance.

Glöm betjänter. För att se till att maximera sin hälsa och prestation knyter dagens miljardärer och techentreprenörer till sig en mindre armé av specialister. Det kan vara alltifrån personliga kemister, dietister och tränare till psykologer, schamaner och doktorer, skriver The Washington Post. Att mikrodosera olika droger eller läkemedel uppges också vara populärt bland eliten. Vissa går så långt som att använda sig av matchmaking-specialister för att hitta partners med högt IQ i förhoppning om kunna att skapa ”superbarn” som ska rädda planeten. – Det här är erfarna businesspersoner, och de styr sina privata liv på samma sätt de skulle styra ett företag eller en verksamhet, säger författaren och entreprenören Richard Kirshenbaum till tidningen. (Svensk översättning av Omni). The wealthy are employing an army of niche specialists — from shamans to hospitality directors — to optimize their lives in the name of self-improvement By Christopher Cameron October 12, 2023 Jag Gill is a New York-based banker turned tech CEO. She has an MBA from MIT. She's a serial start-up founder. In 2021, she launched an artificial intelligence-powered tech company, Vertru Technologies, focused on climate and human rights impacts in supply chains. Her demanding job means that she travels about every month of the year between New York City and places such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Stockholm and India. She sits in on roughly 25 meetings per week. And she has a monk in her life. "There are areas I want to work on," says Gill, who would prefer not to name the monk she met while at Tibet House US in New York, a cultural center established at the behest of the Dalai Lama. "There's professional growth, being a better CEO and a better founder. So he helps me by organizing meditations, where we just sit in noble silence, or we may talk about things." To deal with stress and practice mindfulness, she joined a breathwork community with Angell Deer, a shamanic healer, mystic, medicine man, teacher, permaculturist, beekeeper and international speaker, according to his website. In July, she traveled to Esalen, the storied Big Sur retreat known for its connections to the Human Potential Movement of the 1960s. "I'm there exploring breathwork and these new modalities, but it's all very steeped in Silicon Valley tech culture. There's a guy from Google there," she says. Ben Tauber, a former Google product manager, was CEO at Esalen until 2019. The popularity of metaphysical practices in an industry otherwise founded upon the strict mathematics of algorithms has become a well-known facet of life among the tech elite. Founders are under immense pressure to alchemize start-up ideas into palpable profits for investors. Who better to guide you on that journey than a shaman? But while Gill engages with a well of inspirational figures, she also seeks out experts with a more science-based perspective. To conquer stressful deals, she works with "CEO whisperer" Sharon Melnick, PhD, a business psychologist and executive coach focused on women's success with a decade of research at Harvard Medical School under her belt. "When I have big negotiations, or when I need tactics and strategies, she's on the other end of the phone," Gill says. "We've been doing a program together with some other women on power and pleasure. We are learning how to use dance, movement, flirting and self-talk to just be more alive in the world." Gill and her peers are pursuing the optimization of everyday life, supported by entourages of experts - often managed by a single power assistant - who help the hyper-successful live longer, do more and pursue a fleeting and intangible perfection in every aspect of their existence. Personal chemists now help CEOs hack their psyches with psilocybin chocolates, ayahuasca retreats, microdoses of LSD and IV drips of ketamine. (Elon Musk is one alleged user.) Teams of private doctors, dietitians, scientists, wellness practitioners and trainers help aging executives search for the Fountain of Youth - with occasionally gruesome techniques (such as tech mogul Bryan Johnson's "blood boy"). Shamans guide board room bosses through difficult decisions. Mixed martial artist Khai "The Shadow" Wu trains Mark Zuckerberg. "Pro-natalists" tap matchmakers to secure high-IQ partners to produce elite super children for a world they agree is doomed to societal and environmental collapse. At the $100 million homes of these masters of the universe, vast teams of niche connoisseurs make sure that the right furnishings are in the lounge, the right cars are in the garage, the right toys are on the yacht, the right wines are in the cellar and the right works of art are on the walls - even if the owners of those Veblen goods aren't always sure what it is exactly that they are buying. "Amenity floors" - sprawling underground playpens that have become de rigueur in mansions - create a need for additional specialists. Even a starter estate now comes with a home gym, a movie theater, a wine-tasting room, a cigar room, a treatment room, a styling room, a swimming pool, a game room and, of course, a panic room. Each of those rooms represents an outside expert to hire, whether it's the projectionist or the home security adviser who makes sure that you'll be able to sit out a home invasion in comfort. Real estate agents are traditionally one of the most omnipresent and trusted hired guns to the world's rich. After going through decades of deals, they become like family, discussing markets over dinner at Per Se and showing up at birthday parties. Now, even the family broker is faced with competition from a more optimized expert. "If one of my clients is interested in purchasing a property, I will assist by narrowing down which properties are better suited for them energetically," says Wendi Eckstein, a Los Angeles area-based Reiki master practitioner who harmonizes the energy of individuals and the real estate holdings of wealthy families. "Or if a client feels that there is an uneasiness to the home, I will go in and balance the house." The economy of experts swirling around the super rich has to varying degrees existed for decades, perhaps centuries, but the motivations for hiring them and the roles they play have changed. As the straightforward materialism of the flash 1980s gave way to the holistic self-help perfectionism of the new millennium, tennis coaches and feng shui gurus began to look old hat. Faced with ever-less-ignorable wealth inequality and the hyper-visibility brought on by social media, a moral justification for conspicuous consumption was necessary. A holiday to a $20,000-a-night villa in Polynesia - with the nannies and PA in tow - could look out of touch. But add a marine biologist, an Indigenous healer and an environmentalist to talk to you about coral bleaching, and you are a step closer to being a better you. Their expertise gave your experience purpose. Today, that pursuit of ethical, moral and professional optimization is being pushed toward its logical conclusion afresh by the rise of artificial intelligence, the creation of Scrooge McDuck swimming pools of lucre and a boiling over of existential angst. "During the pandemic, a lot of people had a brush with their own mortality," says Melnick, whose 2022 book, "In Your Power: React Less, Regain Control, Raise Others," attempts to explain why CEOs, politicians and tech moguls often feel "out of their power," unheard, reactive and held hostage to others, despite their material advantages. "It motivated many to want to optimize their lives. 'Do I really want to live like this?' 'Is that all there is?' A lot of factors not within our control prompt us to want to maximize what we can control - which is ourselves. Because of this, many embarked on a journey to 'optimize' what they eat, heal their mental health and get fit. We saw a lot of emphasis on this on social media." Although the pandemic caused most of us to confront our own powerlessness, the already rich were better rewarded for their introspection. Between 2020 and 2022, a fresh billionaire was minted every 30 hours. Billionaires as a whole saw their wealth blossom in the first 24 months of the pandemic more than it had in the period from 1987 to 2010, according to an Oxfam report analyzing Forbes estimates. Post-pandemic, those steeped in the capitalistic efficiency of, say, Silicon Valley or Wall Street, and self-improvement culture of curanderismo healers in Mexico and cryotherapy in the Swiss Alps now had the impetus and resources to apply the logics of those ideologies broadly. "These are seasoned business people, and they run their personal lives the way that they would a corporation or business," says Richard Kirshenbaum, the CEO and founder of NSG/SWAT (a boutique branding agency), an author and a frequent commentator on living life among the wealthy. As a consequence, their homes are frequently operated like five-star resorts, according to Aimée Moreault, a Los Angeles-based personal assistant to ultrahigh-net-worth (UHNW) families, which are defined by the accumulation of at least $30 million, according to Knight Frank, a London-based real estate company. If you were lucky enough to be invited to the Malibu home of a person worth several hundred million, she says, you might be greeted by a personal hospitality director. Like at a luxury resort, the director is there to help plan guests' daily activities, advise them on which trails to hike and set up the surfboards. "They make sure there is consistency throughout their homes," she says. "It's about creating a lifestyle experience. It's more of a younger, tech industry thing." The littoral locations often inhabited by the super rich are hubs for sport fishing, kite boarding, surfing and wakeboarding - sports that have boomed in popularity with a class that prefers its excitement to be imbued with an aura of health and fitness. It has led to demand for full-time water-sports specialists, who manage board sports and an array of watercraft, or who take the family tubing, fishing and jet skiing, according to Forrest Barnett, the president of Hire Society, a staffing agency with locations in New York, the Hamptons, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. He adds that exotic pets, exotic cars and exotic trips often get their own single-hat micromanager. And just as a Fortune 500 company might tap a consulting firm, those with unlimited means seek out experts who can sharpen a dull facet. "I placed a full-time, permanent gaming expert," says a person working for an UHNW family who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a nondisclosure agreement. "My client wanted someone who was the best at all of the best games." Astaple of life among the 1 percent - and pop culture moments from "The Devil Wears Prada" to Naomi Campbell's infamous phone-throwing tantrum (not to mention the recent arraignment of Donald Trump's body man Waltine "Walt" Nauta) - the power PA is also evolving. With dozens to hundreds of specialists working for a single family, the title of personal assistant is giving way to chief of staff, an appellation borrowed from politics. Combining business with pleasure, the CoS not only manages home life - the fitness instructor, dietitian, the watch adviser and Savannah cat tamer - but they also attend their "principal's" business meetings, taking minutes, advising and facilitating high-level requests. Yet unlike executive assistants of yore, the chief of staff is less burdened with planner keeping. AI assistants can now handle the more transactional tasks of scheduling. The more general aspects of travel have become a breeze for those who are not price sensitive thanks to online booking. Exclusive WhatsApp groups help execs like Gill quickly crowdsource needs and arrange last-minute meetings. But rather than put the assistant out of work, advances in technology have created more time to focus on the intimate aspects of the job, according to Bethany Burns, first mate to the captain (a title she created in lieu of chief of staff). Her captain is James Watt, the embattled chief executive of Scottish beer giant BrewDog and the subject of a 2022 BBC documentary alleging inappropriate behavior, claims that Watt has denied. "The assistant role has become more specialized and more personal," she says. "You're a force multiplier. You are a key decision-maker. You are a partner in strategy. You are an influence, a project executor, an integrator. You are making sure that everything flows like qi." In a Wodehousian twist, the power assistant has also been saddled with an even more personal role worthy of the wardrobe-conscious Jeeves: tastemaker. "It's changed," says Nahla Bee, a Los Angeles-based personal assistant to UHNW families. "It used to be that people who had a high net worth had a certain provenance and came from a certain type of family. And generally, they understood luxury from birth. Now, many people are becoming wealthy midlife, or early in life, for the first time." Moreault adds that, when young people become hundred-millionaires or billionaires "overnight," they face a steep learning curve. "The East Coast has much more of that traditional, old-school money that gets handed down. They are a little bit more used to having help around," she says. "On the West Coast, they're not always used to having people around. They're not used to how much staff it takes to run the estates that they're buying. So there is a lot of up educating people as to what it takes to live this lifestyle that they've seen on TV. You have to educate them and train them about what it means to collect art and what it means to collect cars." The nation's 100 largest private landowners - billionaires such as telecom baron John Malone - own a slice of the United States roughly the size of New England, and that's not even counting their properties overseas. Anyone who devoured "Downton Abbey" has a rough idea of what it takes to manage just one of those estates. Housekeepers, butlers, chefs, nannies, chauffeurs and gardeners, even those traditional staffing roles, are being optimized beyond the recognition of a stalwart Carson. "Today it's not just being able to find a nanny, but a ski nanny or a nanny that specializes in Montessori, Waldorf or Reggio Emilia philosophies," says Samantha Lloyd-Gordon, founder and CEO of the SLG Group, a staffing agency serving UHNW individuals. "It's not just holding a child and burping them. It's about how you're engaging with a child in a way that makes them a better person. It's not that this stuff wasn't always there, but there's more of it because of social media and because we are all talking about this stuff more than we did in the past." Lloyd-Gordon adds that other now-common domestic jobs with hyper-specifications include drivers with a police background, firearm training and a concealed-carry permit; a housekeeper who is also an illustrious laundress; a chef capable of cooking for a family of four with four different dietary requirements; and, perhaps, an architecture tutor who can travel with a precocious child. Even the butler is getting a remix, trading in his morning coat, white gloves and "G'evening, Sirs" for an iPhone and a business-casual nonchalance. "When I first started my agency, a lot of my clients were sort of old-school with formal service and formal butlers," says Philippa Smith, the founder and managing director of Silver Swan Recruitment. Founded in 2013, her company staffs the ski chalets, mansions, yachts and private jets of the global 1 percent, placing butlers on $170,000 to $200,000 per year salaries with benefits. Housekeepers make about $120,000, while chefs can make as much as $400,000, she says. "Now, there is a younger generation of UHNW [individuals], and they don't want a 60-year-old butler. They want a butler who can pack a suitcase but who can also handle personal assistant duties. They want a cool, good-looking 30-year-old butler." But the pursuit of excellence also has its more suburban side. "People just want the best," Smith says. "Some of that is for show. Some of it is about keeping up with the Joneses. If their mate down the road has a Russian-Mandarin-French-speaking nanny, they think, 'Why the hell don't we have a Russian-Mandarin-French-speaking nanny?' It's very competitive in the elite world, and everyone wants more. We're a greedy species." © 2023 The Washington Post. Sign up for the Today's Worldview newsletter here.

Extremväder råder just nu på många platser i världen, bland annat i Indien där monsunregnen beter sig alltmer avvikande på grund av klimatförändringarna. Av de över 100 döda har minst 88 av dem dött i den värst drabbade delstaten Himachal Pradesh, som ligger omkring 500 kilometer norr och huvudstaden New Delhi. Över 30 000 evakuerade I New Delhi har bostadsområden nära floden Jamuna evakuerats, där människor tvingats ta sin tillflykt till tillfälliga boplatser som vindskydd eller tält. Enligt den lokala räddningstjänsten ska uppemot 30 000 personer också ha evakuerats till skolor, som håller stängt på grund av översvämningarna, eller till skyddsläger som gjorts om till temporära boenden. Även helikoptrar har satts in för att rädda människor från vattenmassorna i Himachal Pradesh. Klimatförändringarna påverkar Skyfall och översvämningar är vanligt förekommande under monsunsäsongen som börjar i juni och håller i sig till september, men i år har det redan fallit ovanligt mycket regn. Enligt forskarna beter sig monsunregnen alltmer avvikande på grund av klimatförändringarna, något som resulterar i upprepade översvämningar och jord- och lerskred. Dalai Lama, som bor i Himachal Pradesh, sa i ett uttalande tidigare i veckan att han ber för de personer som dött i samband med översvämningarna, och att han förstår att myndigheterna gör allt de kan för att mildra effekterna av situationen: ”Jag ber för de som har förlorat sina liv och framför mina kondoleanser till de familjer som har förlorat nära och kära, såväl till andra som drabbats av denna naturkatastrof”. ”Jag förstår att delstatsregeringen och andra myndigheter gör allt de kan för att ge lindring och mildra effekterna av denna tragedi”.

Ola Norén och Roland Ulvselius: ”Det finns för få roliga böcker.”

God morgon! Meta gör en kraftansträngning för att utmana Twitter. Planen är att den nya appen ska värva kändisar som Oprah Winfrey och Dalai Lama.

Meta har vid ett internt möte visat upp den Twitterutmanare som företaget haft under utveckling en tid. Det avslöjar The Verge, som även har kommit över skärmdumpar som visar en glimt av hur appen ser ut. Den nya appen är helt fristående från Metas övriga produkter och är integrerad med Activity Pub, ett decentraliserat protokoll för sociala medier. Metaschefen Chris Cox uppges under mötet ha sagt till de anställda att det redan finns intresse för tjänsten bland kända profiler och innehållsskapare. Cox påsås även ha hävdat att Meta för diskussioner om stora namn som Oprah Winfrey och Dalai Lama om att finnas med på plattformen. Arbetet med appen – som går under kodnamnet Project 92 – ska ha inletts i januari, och Metas ambition ska vara att lansera den ”så fort det är möjligt”.

Klippet där Dalai Lama bad en 10-årig pojke suga på hans tunga blev viralt över hela världen och orsakade en massiv kritikstorm mot den religiösa ledaren. Men händelsen var tagen ur sitt sammanhang och skulle kunna förklaras med hjälp av tibetanska seder. Det skriver den svenske antropologen Magnus Fiskesjö i The Diplomat. Enligt Fiskesjö handlar det hela troligen om en smutskastningskampanj från Kina. Ett syfte menar han kan vara att dra ljus från omfattande kinesiskt förtryck mot befolkningen i det ockuperade Tibet. The latest smear campaign succeeded beyond China’s wildest dreams by playing into Western ignorance about Tibetan culture – and self-righteous “cancel culture” on social media. By Magnus Fiskesjö May 19, 2023 On April 8, 2023, a new global smear campaign against the Dalai Lama was unleashed on social media. This, in itself, wasn’t news. The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, has lived in exile in India since 1959, when he was forced to flee his homeland, occupied by Mao’s China. He remains deeply loved in Tibet, but the Chinese regime has made it a criminal offense even to have a photo of him. And ever since 1959, Chinese officials have been vilifying him in every medium possible. But while this latest round is almost certainly also disinformation “Made in China,” it represents a new approach: Attempting to paint the Dalai Lama as a pedophile. The trick succeeded beyond belief, with millions of people in the United States, Europe, and beyond – due to prior prejudice coupled with the self-righteous tendency to jump to conclusions, combined with widespread ignorance about Tibet. As the Tibetan exile activist Lhadon Tethong pointed out in a recent public conversation, the goal was very likely also to distract the world from the new dramatic oppression inside Chinese-occupied Tibet. U.N. human rights experts just issued a warning that Chinese authorities are detaining large numbers of both children and adults in Tibet, to erase their culture and turn them into Chinese-speaking laborers – modeled after the massive parallel genocide against the Uyghurs. Others suggest that the smear campaign had an element of revenge, for the recent successful inauguration of a ethnic Mongol boy born in the United States, to the third highest reincarnated post in Tibetan Buddhism – in the presence of 600 Mongol VIP guests in Dharamsala, India, the Dalai Lama’s home in exile. This shows the global vitality of Tibetan Buddhism, which China has struggled for decades to stamp out, and strengthens the Tibetan community’s hand for the eventual designation of a successor to the Dalai Lama himself. But how did the April campaign begin? The raw material came from a rather ordinary occasion in Dharamsala. An Indian mother working with Tibetan refugee charities had managed to book her young son (about 8 years old) to meet the Dalai Lama. This took place on February 28, without much notice. Film clips were posted online, commemorating the happy occasion. A month passed. The Chinese propaganda offices were probably brainstorming how to counter the expected renewed criticism of China. They have, in recent years, put new resources into manipulating social media abroad, not just at home; using global platforms, not Chinese ones. The propaganda officers must have felt like they struck gold when they found the video from February. They cut out a section to make it look like the Dalai Lama wanted to kiss the 8-year-old boy. (He does stick his tongue out, and even says, in halting English, “Suck my tongue!”) Using a Twitter account started up in February, the clip was sent out with the slur “Pedo-Dalai Lama.” It spread through linked bot accounts and networks of trusted pro-regime people around the world. Within days, it had millions of hits. And so it continued, with lots of memes piling on. Suddenly, many people with only the vaguest notion of the Dalai Lama could be heard condemning him. I first heard about the clip from an otherwise well-informed academic colleague, who condemned the Dalai Lama, saying “He’s gone too far! He should have understood that this ruins his reputation.” But what actually happened? It turns out that in Tibet, it is customary to feed one’s children by mouth – a custom that apparently survives, not least in the Dalai Lama’s old home district, Amdo. From this background comes the standing joke that elderly Tibetans resort to, when they have run out of treats or sweets to give their grandchild: They’ll stick out their tongue, and say to the child, “You may eat my tongue, for I have nothing else left.” That the Dalai Lama said “suck” instead of “eat” was perhaps because he was thinking of candy, not food – the original Tibetan wording is che le sa, literally “eat my tongue.” There’s nothing “sexual” in the full video. The Dalai Lama talks with the boy about how as a child, he often quarreled with his older brother, jokingly pushing his head onto the boy’s shoulder, to show how. He then places his forehead against the boy’s forehead – another traditional gesture of respect, called oothuk (like formally shaking hands, in the West). The boy himself was interviewed afterwards, as was his mother (who sat a few meters away during the whole interaction). Both were overjoyed to have had this moment. Nothing inappropriate happened – note that the boy was actually kissed both on the cheek and on the mouth (a kiss called po, which children also traditionally receive from elders), just before the Dalai Lama stuck out his tongue – which in turn signaled that they were done. Originally the Indian boy asked if he could “hug” the Dalai Lama. At first the Dalai Lama did not understand the English word. In Tibet people usually don’t hug, nor do they shake hands. But he got the best of both worlds: oothuk, po, and the “che le sa” joke; plus a hug, a handshake and a chat, as we see in the full video. For me as an anthropologist, the whole incident illustrated not just the “dirty minds” of Western viewers (which many in India complain about), but how cultural differences and bodily practices can be mis-translated. We have to admire the “anthropological” skills of the Chinese propaganda department: They knew their audience and immediately saw an opening. Most people in the West have no clue about Tibetan cultural practices, let alone about “eat my tongue” as a non-sexual concept. Plus, many Westerners know of Catholic priests convicted of pedophilia. Combining the two, Chinese propagandists saw an opening for suggesting that the Dalai Lama too, as a male “priest” of sorts, is a pedophile. The trick succeeded, beyond expectations: Damage was inflicted globally, to the reputation of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people. Few Western media made any space for talking about China’s new large-scale atrocities in Tibet. Curiously, the Dalai Lama’s office itself issued an apology for “the hurt his words may have caused.” This frustrated many Tibetans. Most don’t think there is reason to apologize to the world, not even tactically — actually, the apology for “any hurt caused” may have to do with the propensity of Tibetan Buddhists to take on negative feelings (regardless of guilt). There were spontaneous demonstrations in Dharamsala and in Ladakh in support of the Dalai Lama; journalist Tenzin Pema wanted the world to apologize to Tibet. While pondering all this, an old memory emerged in my mind. During my own anthropological fieldwork with the Wa people in the border areas between China and Myanmar, I saw a young woman sitting a short distance away, with her baby son. The woman suddenly began to feed the baby by mouth! I had never seen that before, and turned away as if in shame. It seemed so incredibly private … and sexual. But the sexualization, of course, was only in my own mind. No Wa people would find this feeding the least bit sexual. To feed babies with the mouth is what Wa people do every day – probably in many places around the world not yet conquered by plastics. My own momentary confusion is comparable to the Western herd-mentality reaction against the Dalai Lama. Most who encountered the planted materials on social media reached instantly for the globalized Hollywood morality they have been inculcated with, and did not seek even a minimal contextualization. It was enough for the propaganda just to supply a hint of pedophilia: People quickly filled in the “obvious” interpretation, and the indignation that the Dalai Lama is a such a child abuser. Interestingly, this is the same phenomenon we’ve seen in the oratory of former U.S. President Donald Trump. As George Lakoff, Janet McIntosh, and others have observed, when he wants to say something really awful, he speaks in unfinished sentences. The crowds fill in the rest, and they love it; it gives them a sense of righteousness. In the case of the Dalai Lama, the Chinese propaganda dangled the bait in a very similar fashion. The difference was that this was mostly not about right-wing nationalists, but leftist virtue signaling. Yet the clinically fact-free implication worked in exactly the same way. Many people do know about the tongue being used as greetings among Tibetan adults – like they’ve seen the tongues of New Zealand Maori warriors. Even so, very few people who saw the video clip stopped to think: “Is there something we’re missing about how this is framed – by who, and why?” Even Slavoj Zizek – one of the few Western commentators who picked up on the Tibetan meaning of “Eat my tongue!” – failed to ask why so few people gave pause, instead quickly defaulting to Western morality. The Chinese regime’s social media influencer experts must have known this – that’s why they were so successful, globally. I had a look at my own country, Sweden. The biggest daily paper, Aftonbladet, told readers without context that the Dalai Lama was “under fire” for asking a boy to “suck his tongue.” In a second article the paper quoted Cardi B, the American rapper celebrity, launching a general attack on those who abuse children – such as the Dalai Lama! Other media similarly played up the “scandal” while saying nothing at all about the Tibetan culture, or about the new concentration camps in Tibet. In the United States, the venerated Associated Press was much the same. Self-righteous defenders of children were falling over each other in what might best be described as a herd stampede. Media figures swallowed the planted allegations whole, condemning the Dalai Lama and demanding investigations. Cardi B’s instant intervention can be seen on the equally arrogant Jason Lee Podcast, on YouTube. Another example was the “Megyn Kelly Show,” on the day after the incident trigger; note how Kelly starts off by assuming it all took place in Tibet, as if the Dalai Lama was not forced into exile 65 years ago. All of this compounds the injury and insult already inflicted on the Tibetan people, whose suffering under Chinese occupation now also includes watching how they are maligned through China’s successful smear campaign, which people around the world swallow indiscriminately, as if the case was closed even before it opened. Several better-informed writers in India (such as Kaveri Gill, Dilshad Noor, Utpal Kumar, and others) chose instead to reflect on the lessons we learn from this horror story about our social media afflictions. As they suggest, there are major new issues here for us non-Tibetans. It is clear that democracies must better supervise YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc., or these powerful platforms will be hijacked and used as tools in the hands of authoritarians, at home or abroad. It all begins with the media industry’s hunger for algorithmic scandal profits: Trust in our democracies is undermined as online audiences are attracted with ever more outrageous fake “clickbait” to make them stay on the site and be re-packaged as ad targets. Enter the Chinese Communist Party: Its gigantic, high-tech, AI-driven influence machine is clearly increasingly well-honed and more efficient, worldwide. It is getting dramatically better at playing on our prejudices and ignorance, as in this case. Defending against it is an ever greater challenge than guarding against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The whole affair also points to the decline of trust in scholars. Media everywhere simply relayed the clickbait propaganda, without looking anything up; much less consulting with anthropologists or others knowledgeable of Tibetan culture. In some ways, it’s anthropology that has absented itself from the stage: In our public “woke” posture, we have abdicated our original job of explaining cultural difference. That leaves the stage even more open to malicious actors. We can be sure that China’s propaganda machine is constantly looking for new “gold” – for example, to attack the world’s sympathy for Taiwan. © 2023 The Diplomat. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

Den omstridda videon av Dalai lama och en ung pojke har utnyttjats av kinesiska propagandakanaler. I inlägg på sociala medier har den spirituelle ledaren dömts ut som ”demon” och ”slavägare”, enligt BBC. Samtidigt sprider Kina generell kritik om Tibet – för att ta fokus från sitt eget förtryck, skriver Kinamedia.

Den senaste tidens uppmärksamhet kring Dalai lama har inneburit ett bakslag för alla som förespråkar ökad självständighet i Tibet. Det säger aktivisten John Jones till BBC. – Det finns en frustration över att Tibet inte får någon uppmärksamhet i medierna men nu är i blickfånget av den här anledningen, säger han. Aktivister har länge slagit larm om att det pågår brott mot mänskliga rättigheter i regionen. Bland annat uppger FN att Kina tvingat en miljon tibetanska barn att ”assimileras” genom att placera dem i särskilda skolor. – Det här [uppmärksamheten kring Dalai lama] har varit en gåva för alla som vill förringa de problem som finns i Tibet, säger Jones.