Obama and Dalai Lama meet in the White House

[Holden Caulfield]

What do you think of this event? Do you think that Obama was right to meet a fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner, or do you think that it was better to cave into corporate interests and appease China?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/...ex.html?hpt=T2

Washington (CNN) -- President Obama met with the Dalai Lama -- the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader -- at the White House on Thursday despite strong objections from Chinese government officials.

The meeting has the potential to further complicate Sino-U.S. tensions, which have been rising in recent months. China has warned it would damage Beijing's ties to Washington.


During the meeting, Obama stressed his "strong support for the preservation of Tibet's unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity and the protection of human rights for Tibetans," according to a White House statement.

The president praised the Dalai Lama's "commitment to nonviolence and his pursuit of dialogue with the Chinese government," the statement added. He also stressed the importance of having both sides "engage in direct dialogue to resolve differences, and was pleased to hear about the recent resumption of talks," it noted.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapc...oll/index.html

Three Quarters of Americans think that Tibet should be independent. This comes to 225 million people. Most Europeans also think that Tibet should be independent - in fact most of the world excluding China wishes for peace and independence in Tibet.

This time, lets make the meeting more than a photo op!

Time to "FREE TIBET and SAVE the WORLD"

Next stop: Beijing. Tell the Chinese dictatorship: "Let go of Tibet, before its too late. 50+ yrs of suppression is Enough!"

[OldPretan]

Refresh my memory, please. What exactly have either of those done to warrant the peace prize.

I loath communism/fascism/socialism as much as Nazi Ufo Commander does. But the brutalities of Mao's rule were a great improvement for the average Tibetan peasant compared to the vicious feudal theocracy which it overthrew, thereby enabling the Dalai Lama to pass himself off as some hippy-dippy pacifist instead of the vile perverted theocrat which he'd otherwise have become.
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tash�-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine. 14 The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. 15 The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care, They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land--or the monastery’s land--without pay, to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.16 Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. 17

As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.

One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.”18 Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed.19

If you wish to know more, just search on "tibet theocracy".
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/view...st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Free Tibet from religious as well as secular ideology.

[pinguin]

Free Tibet from the Chinese, first. Tibet for the Tibetians, not for the Chinese Imperialism.

[Holden Caulfield]

Tibet belongs to the Tibetians, and not the chinese Imperialists.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet won the Nobel Peace Prize as the leader of the Tibetan people in their noble, non-violent struggle against the chinese colonists. I encourage everyone to go to www.studentsforafreetibet.org/ to learn about Tibet. Check out our YouTube site as well - don't fall into the old trap the chinese want you to by listening to their propaganda.

Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for his extraordinary efforts to promote peace among peoples, as well as overcoming the color barrier in the American presidency.

Both of these men are great achievers - lamplights unto the darkened world of bigotry and hatred in our age, and true role-models which will shine unto our children and their children and their children's children and so-on down through the ages.

Also, Michael Parenti is not a good source on Tibet. His reasoning is flawed and his view of history is laughable. He is essentially a Stalinist trying to pose as a moderate liberal. Anyone who knows about History knows that Tibet was in fact more progressive than China at the time of their invasion - they had even implemented some socialist policies with much success. The Tibetan government had stored several years worth of grain in surplus, and the average GDP of Tibet was higher than that of China.

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?ui...00&topic=15846