I never quite understood the sympathy for the Dalai Lama. He is a religious leader claiming that he is the rightful leader of a country because god/the heavens chose him.
I dreamt I was at the Dalai Lama's execution last night, he was about to get into a coffin and they had him stand there and they were showing where the swords were going to cut him. Weird. DD
You don't know much about the Dalai Lama. He has said that he would give up temporal power if Tibet was granted autonomy and asked for free elections in Tibet where he wouldn't run. The Dalai Lama has even publically expressed doubts about his own divinity.
The Dalai Lama has said this before and has been calling for engagement and talks with the PRC for years.
any details on the negotiations with PRC? obviously he is going to say the right thing in the public. besides, i am sure he is asking non tibetans out of that area to preserve the culture. why would PRC allow that to happen? if he is not asking them to move out, it's only a matter of time before their culture gets washed out.
I'm curious why you think that the Dalai Lama is privately trying to not have negotiations with the PRC? What is that based on?
Are you kidding me? That's like saying slaves had basic human rights in the 1800's. Hey, they had food and shelter, right? What the heck were they whining about? I understand your point. Gotta disappoint the the snide comments from others telling me to go to China though. I have a Taiwanese Stepmother and have been to Taiwan as well as to the mainland on separate trips. I do think that the concept of personal liberty is less prevalent in China, and among Asians in general. There is more of a tendency to sacrifice personal liberty in order to live among each other harmoniously. But I'm not going after China for some silly small loss of personal freedoms. I'm going after them for invading Tibet and placing them under military rule. Jesus, you sound like assholes defending Hussein after he invaded Kuwait. "Well, it's just the King of Kuwait. I have a hard time feeling sympathy for an independent country invaded by it's superpower neighbor if I don't like their style of government." Great attitude.
This ain't complicated. Invading your neighbor and squelching an independent country should be a bad thing, right? Especially when you maintain a repressive regime for half a century. How hard is it to say that it wasn't right to remove Tibet's ability to control their own future?
from what i heard online. it sounds like he wants the greater tibetan area, in which a big chunk has been in a lot of ethnic groups hands which doesn't make sense. it also sounded like he wants han chinese move out. which also doesn't make sense. basically his idea of autonomy isn't much far away from independence. that's based on what i heard online in prevoius years. i doubt it changed much late. but i could be wrong though. but it's more than just the human rights that he is pushing for.
what you take for granted didn't happen in china until after 1950's or 1960's. you think those basic human rights where there before that? so food, shelter for EVERYONE is a big step up. and, since you know asian culture is sacrifice personal liberty, then why are you pushing asians to give up their culture to adopt personal freedom? didn't you argue we should preserve tibetan culture? what about other asian cultures? oh wait, it doesn't go well with demacrocy, let's get rid it. right... and lastly, how come other ethinic groups didn't feel they got treated so bad? like my relatives.
The Tibetan culture is pretty diluted these days. Actually, the Native American analogy is pretty apt here. And I do agree with your point. No nation will actually try to put real political pressure on China to give up Tibet. But meeting with the Lama does look good in terms of presenting the good democracy vs the bad communism.
I guess I just can't google very well. Can someone please find this for me? I would like to see it. Thanks.
Just curious. But isn't the idea of personal freedom that we live how we want? If Asians wishes to sacrifice a bit of personal liberty for a more harmonious life, who are we to judge? Also ironic that I find this trait to be LEAST prevalent in China than any other Oriental country(Korea, Taiwan, Japan, etc.) Such attitude has more to do with ancient oriental culture, which was pretty much destroyed with the communist rule. So you obviously haven't seen enough of mainland China. Just curious, but what's the cutoff point for deciding when it's a bad idea to take over countries? Every major power in the world today was established through conquest. This includes the good old "human rights activist" USA. Are we going to retroactively declare all such takeovers immoral and needs to be rectified? It's pretty obvious that if Tibet belonged to any non-Communist country, no one in the US would give a damn about it.
Oddly I don' remember reading that the US took Arizona and Utah by force. I have this odd notion that the states voted on whether or not to become US states. Tibet didn't vote. Their citizens don't want to be Chines. Hence the protests and riots all the time.
And if you honestly think that the concept of sacrificing personal liberty for the greater societal good was destroyed by Communism, I have no idea what to even say to you. That make no sense. The entire point of Communism, whether you agree with it or not, is to sacrifice individual rights for the good of the state. It is senseless to imply that the Japanese sacrifice their freedoms at a higher rate than citizens of a nation that enforces sterilization.
