Who’s afraid of the Dalai Lama?

[unhappycamper]

http://indrus.in/blogs/2014/02/25/whos_afraid_of_the_dalai_lama_33293.html



The Dalai Lama's meetings with US officials annoy China.

Who’s afraid of the Dalai Lama?
February 25, 2014
M K Bhadrakumar, specially for RIR

China feels genuinely upset with the United States over the meeting between President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama in the White House in Washington last weekend, but, nonetheless, will not make a mountain out of a molehill by making it an issue in the bilateral relations. This just about sums up Beijing’s strong criticism of the meeting and its growing confidence that the Tibetan movement is way past its prime and cannot any longer pose a serious diplomatic challenge internationally.

Of course, the US has a long history of involvement in Tibet, which according to the Chinese account, was a root cause of the 1959 rebellion. China alleged that the CIA-trained cadres and weapons were airdropped in Tibet to participate in the rebellion and to escort the Dalai Lama to India. The US interference continued through the 1960s but following the normalization of Sino-American relationship, it took a different form and in the period since then got suffused with “public diplomacy”, one vector being the periodic reception accorded to the Dalai Lama by senior US politicians and another devolving upon the US’ substantial financial support for him.

In the post-cold war era, Washington revved up the involvement with President H.W. Bush meeting the Dalai Lama in 1991. During the Bill Clinton presidency, in 1997, the US state department for the first time designated a Special Coordinator for Tibetan issues. The presidency of George W. Bush even saw a significant stepping up of US financial support for the Dalai Lama, with the Congress passing the Tibetan Policy Act in 2002 and holding public hearings on Tibetan issues.

However, President Barack has followed a middle line by showing just the level of interest in the human rights situation in China to ward off domestic criticism that he is indifferent, but at the same time displaying manifestly his lack of enthusiasm about the Dalai Lama and his travails and taking care to sequester the rising graph of US-China relations from being complicated by Tibetan issues.

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Plutocrats that don't understand spirituality . n/t

[DetlefK]

2. Plutocrats that already handpicked the Dalai Lama's successor in case of his death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchen_Lama

[Jesus Malverde]

3. Spirituality? He's another religious con artist... with some reactionary views.

[orpupilofnature57]

4. Who's a Cheap Clown ? Berkeley 2/21/14 and Not Torquemada .

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=9442587