3/22/2008 01:42:00 PM

The current situation in Tibet is about an idiosyncratic way of life being exterminated by the militaristic patterns of globalization. That these patterns are being enacted by a communist regime is irrelevant. Nevertheless, it need not be forgotten that the ground for the Sino-globalization that is at work in today's Tibet was cleared by the British Empire a hundred years ago (with Russia, Japan, Nepal and India having bit parts in the ensuing years).

The distance of mountain and wilderness that protects a way of life is what is at stake in Tibet and why the transport networks imposed by China are the advent of the actual material domination of the country. From the highway system that reached Lhasa in the 1950s to the super train finished fifty years later it is the acceleration of people and information that is the domineering cadence that destroys the autonomy of the Tibetan way.

This is progress engineered to unravel the fabric of local identity leaving in its place the public camera, ID card and military checkpoint: the architecture of control that regulates the acceleration of subjugation in the name of national unity, financial opportunity and social stability.