Sinomania!

It seems a waste of bandwidth to weigh in (once again) on the latest publicity stunt of the Dalai Lama but "His Holiness" is a media darling and I feel compelled to put his visit to the White House in perspective: It means nothing except that the fundraising party circuit in Washington DC is even more unctuous than usual.

The Dalai Lama is a very influential political figure and a fixture of an international celebrity party circuit that sees him as a self-help guru. Lamaism is not Buddhism and neither is the Dalai Lama buddhist. He drinks alcohol, eats meat, and maintains many positions such as anti-gay that his otherwise politically correct crowd should find abhorrent. To Chinese he is a tool of the American government in its now more muted quest to change China. The Dalai Lama and his entourage of Tibet exile elites and their descendents live lavishly off the donations of morally righteous Westerners in stark contrast to the slums and squalor of his adopted home Dharamsala in India.

If you want a full sense of the Dalai Lama's ghoulish character read my earlier posts on him and Tibet here.

The 13th China-India meeting on disputed borders drew little interest let alone new borders on the maps of either nation. Despite increasing trade ties and on-going top-level talks at international summits such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Chinese and Indian positions on borderlands with Tibet remain unresolved. Public opinion on both sides is heated even though the borders themselves are a legacy of the British Empire....

Wednesday past (March 11) was the 50th anniversary of the 1959 uprising in Tibet that brought Chinese troops into Lhasa and led to the flight of the Dalai Lama, his court, and several thousand of his supporters and elites to India. The anniversary was marked by small demonstrations in European and American cities ranging from one thousand or so in London and New York to a couple dozen in Western capitals such as Canberra and Washington. Tibet was under a Beijing enforced clampdown so we were told by a relentless barrage of media stories during the preceding week.

The question is really why does the West want confrontation over Tibet? At the western end of the vast Tibetan Plateau lies Afghanistan where the USA occupies the land and drops bombs on civilians in the latest effort to bring the people up from the 13th Century to the present. Yet Chinese rationalizations for doing just the same thing - some might argue with a certain degree of success and without aerial bombardment - are roundly criticized as ‘genocide.’ Washington has no plans to vacate the western end of the Tibetan Plateau. In fact, Obama has made a ramp up of American forces there his priority.

The Tibetan Plateau is the largest and highest land area on Earth. That is its strategic value. It would be the only land area above water if the world were to flood as in “End Times” scenarios. The area is the source of seven of the world’s greatest rivers, the water supply for billions. Every military strategist from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz knew the importance of holding the high ground. But the USA and China need to cooperate not confront each other in this region unless the 21st Century be dominated by a new “Great Game” that could destroy both nations.

Western media are drumming up a storm of righteous indignation (just in time for the holidays) over the failures of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan elites in India to reach a deal with Beijing. As anyone who has bothered to actually read the Dalai's wants, the issue is not "free Tibet" but acceptance by Beijing as the true rulers of Tibetans. As long as there are power rivalries with Beijing such as determining the 14th Panchem Lama the Dalai Lama cannot be a despot. The Dalai Lama (and his court) cannot accept this compromise. Thus the stalemate.

The British, who defined Tibet's borders and helped create the Tibet brand of a "Shangri-La" utopia for lost Westerners bored with their own spiritual heritage, are trying to play intermediary. Foreign Minister Bill Rammel urged the Tibetan confab at Dharamsala to seek "meaningful autonomy for Tibet within the framework of the Chinese constitution."

It's not hard to buy a mob in Asia. Given the global cash crisis will we again see riots in Lhasa soon? Let's hope the Free Tibet crowd will be restrained enough to keep their moral righteousness on the bumpers of their sedans.

Anti-Beijing Olympics protests currently exaggerated by giant headlines and cropped wire photos today beg the question: who is behind the Beijing Olympics boycott?

Principally, it is a project of Paris based Reporters Without Borders / Reporters Sans Frontiers or RSF. The grand sounding organization was founded by Robert Menard, the self-styled "General Secretary" of the supposedly independent non-governmental group.

RSF is anything but unbiased however and receives its funding from a variety of government sources including the US State Department and Ronald Reagan's National Endowment for Democracy, whose officers read like a who's who of neoconservatism and include nearly all of the signers of the "Project for a new American Century." RSF has long been a font of anti-China news stories of dubious credibility.

RSF was banned by the United Nations in 2003 and kept away from its sessions on "human rights" because of its political activities. An imporitant financial contributer of RSF is TECRO, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, which has its own agenda with Beijing.

Beyond RSF there are some Hollywood hypocrites such as Mia Farrow or George Clooney, a myriad of "actvist" groups affiliated with the Falun Dafa cult, and collections of coffee house revolutionaries from far right Christian Zionists to far left limousine liberals.

Amidst all this ridiculousness very little, if anything, is actually being done to the benefit of anyone in Tibet.

In late February an anonymous tipster in China told Sinomania! to “watch out” soon for big protests. On Tuesday I reported on the apparently coordinated protests that were occurring around the world by angry groups of Tibetans demanding peace. The agitations continue and have now turned violent in the Tibetan capital Lhasa, site of the ancient Tibetan theocracy’s 1000-room Potala Palace.

Consider the words used in the news coverage of the riots in Tibet: the protestors we are told are “anti-China,” “pro-democracy,” it is an “intifadeh” according to TIME magazine, and all wire services condemn China’s use of “brutal force.” The latter words are straight from the lips of the Dalai Lama whose press releases have eerily matched the timing of each showy demonstration from the beginning of this week to today’s well photographed shout matches outside the United Nations building, in London, and elsewhere.

The reports of “gunfire” can be traced to the United States embassy in Beijing which says it heard of gunfire from phone calls to the embassy. Other sources of what’s happening in Tibet right now are the numerous, nameless “rights groups” that have the ear of Taiwan newspapers, the NED funded Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, and the Agence France Press.

So out of 2,000-odd headlines currently aggregated by Google News relating to these events of Tibet and Tibetans what do we really know?

The Chinese government is officially blaming the Dalai Lama himself for much of the agitation. This may surprise most Americans and many in Paris, London, and Berlin, since the luxury loving, alcohol drinking, meat-eating, Dalai Lama has so successfully branded himself to “peace” and “spiritual fulfillment,” but His Holiness is a very active and opportunistic politician. As I pointed out on this blog and in a video that was banned by YouTube the Dalai Lama is a tool of the American government. And the USA does influence China’s Himalayan border from Laos to Afghanistan with CIA psy-ops and actual troop presence as it has for over 60 years.

More likely, however, the real culprit behind the trouble in Lhasa is inflation and poverty. The Chinese Parliament (which is in session – showing obvious political timing to the unrest) is grappling with record inflation. Food prices are up over 23% on average. Prices for all goods and staples are rising dramatically including fuel and cooking oil. Remember, it was a surge in cooking oil prices that sent the Burma (Myanmar) monks over the edge last fall.

The Beijing government's statistical bureau does not publish Tibet data individually, alone of China’s provinces and autonomous areas. The lack of transparency into Tibet may be because it is a very skewed place. Reports are that inflation may run as high as 300% in the region. And ethnic Tibetans are mired in poverty. It is also well known that Chinese dominate the day-to-day markets and businesses in Lhasa and the urban areas of Tibet. When wire reports talk of shops looted, markets ablaze, and overturned Audis set afire in the streets, something other than “democracy” is at issue.