When did the neoconservatives start giving a shit about Tibet?

Keith Bradsher | Hong Kong | January 23

NYT - Security forces opened fire on Tibetan protesters in western China on Monday, wounding at least 32 people and killing at least one of them in the largest violent confrontation in ethnic Tibetan areas of China since 2008, two Tibetan rights groups and the Tibetan exile government said.

Free Tibet, a group based in London, said tensions remained high into the evening after the shootings in Luhuo, which is known in Tibetan as Draggo and located in westernmost Sichuan Province, near the border with Tibet.

It was the second reported shooting of Tibetan protesters in the past week and a half. The previous one, on Jan. 14, in which two people were reported wounded, took place in Aba, also located in Sichuan Province and 100 miles northeast of Luhuo.

Johannesburg | Oct 7

AFP - Desmond Tutu's last-ditch appeal to South Africa to grant a visa to the Dalai Lama on the eve of his 80th birthday was rejected Thursday, marring the start of the celebrations.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader on Tuesday cancelled a planned trip to South Africa because of delays with his visa, provoking a furious response from Tutu who blasted President Jacob Zuma's government as worse than apartheid and accused him of kowtowing to China.

British billionaire Richard Branson joined the chorus of condemnation in a blog post, saying he had written to Zuma urging him to allow the Dalai Lama's visit.

"How very sad therefore to see South Africa bowing to pressure from China to stop the Dalai Lama visiting South Africa to celebrate Archbishop Desmond Tutu's birthday this Friday, where together they were going to discuss peace and reconciliation," he said.

Zuma has refused to take a public stand on the visa, saying Monday that "I don't think that you can get a definite answer from me".

What an ass!

Johannesburg | Sept 28

AFP - Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama berated the South African government Wednesday for its handling of the Tibetan spiritual leader's request for a visa to attend Tutu's 80th birthday party.

The pair say Pretoria has yet to respond to the visa request, which has put South Africa in an awkward position with key trade partner China.

"The manner in which the South African government has responded to the visa application of His Holiness the Dalai Lama... is profoundly disrespectful of two Nobel Peace laureates who are among the most revered spiritual leaders on earth," their offices said in a joint statement.

Tutu said Pretoria's handling of the matter was "reminiscent of the way authorities dealt with applications by black South Africans for travel documents under apartheid."

Tutu has invited the Dalai Lama to celebrate his 80th birthday with him on October 7 in Cape Town.

The Tibetan spiritual leader is also scheduled to deliver the inaugural Desmond Tutu International Peace Lecture the following day.

But South Africa -- which denied him a visa in 2009, admitting it did not want to jeopardise ties with China -- has been dragging its feet on his visa request, according to Tutu.

Ashwini Bhatia | Dharmsala | Sept 24

The Guardian - The Dalai Lama said Saturday if he is to be reincarnated he will leave clear written instructions about the process, but that the matter is unlikely to come up for a number of years.

The Tibetan spiritual leader said in a statement that when he is "about 90" he will consult Buddhist scholars to evaluate whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue at all. He is 76.

The statement came after a meeting between the Dalai Lama and the leaders of the four Tibetan Buddhist sects, the first since he transferred his political role earlier this year to an elected prime minister.

China reviles the Dalai Lama as a separatist, although the Nobel Peace Prize laureate insists he is only seeking increased autonomy for Tibet. Beijing has left little doubt that it intends to be deeply involved in choosing the next Dalai Lama. That concern has led the current Dalai Lama to contemplate ideas that break with the ancient system in which each dead Dalai Lama is reincarnated in the body of a male child.

In May, the Dalai Lama formally stepped down as head of the Tibetan government-in-exile, giving up the political power that he and his predecessors have wielded over Tibetans for hundreds of years. Though he remains the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, his decision to abdicate is one of the biggest upheavals in the community since a Chinese crackdown led him to flee Tibet in 1959 into exile in India.

China insists that religious law requires that the Dalai Lama's reincarnation be born in a Tibetan area under Chinese control. However, the Dalai Lama has said his successor will be born in exile and has even floated the idea of choosing his own successor while still alive — perhaps even a woman.

Beijing | Aug 15

AFP - A Tibetan monk set himself on fire and died on Monday in southwest China, state media and a witness said, months after another self-immolation in the restive area sparked a crackdown by authorities.

The 29-year-old monk set himself on fire in Sichuan province's Daofu county and died of his injuries, the official Xinhua news agency reported, quoting local authorities. A hotel receptionist near the scene confirmed the incident.

"I saw a monk lying on the ground and burning, he died right in front of the county government building. Before setting himself on fire, he was distributing leaflets," the receptionist, who refused to be named, told AFP over the phone.

An official at the Daofu government office refused to comment when contacted by AFP.

Many Tibetans in this area of Sichuan bristle against what they say is repressive Chinese rule - a claim Beijing denies - and the region has experienced several bouts of unrest over the past few years.

According to the London-based Free Tibet rights group, the monk - called Tsewang Norbu - came from the Nyitso monastery. He drank petrol, sprayed himself with the flammable liquid and set himself on fire, the group said.

He was heard calling out "We Tibetan people want freedom", "Long live the Dalai Lama", and "Let the Dalai Lama return to Tibet" before he died, it added.

This is the second reported self-immolation this year in this area of Sichuan, where many monks revere the Dalai Lama - Tibet's spiritual leader - who fled China in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

This one might bear a little attention, however:

BEIJING — Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani arrived in China on Tuesday fora four-day visit, picking up some welcome diplomatic support at a critical moment in Pakistan’s relations with the United States.

The prime minister’s visit was planned as part of a long-planned celebration of diplomatic ties, but analysts said Pakistan is using it to hint that China is an alternative source of security and economic aid — a reassuring message for a nation angered and humiliated by the covert American raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama - who famously frowns at the idea of killing mosquitoes - is widely reported to have said that the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was justified. He didn't, leaving open to speculation whether the affair should be viewed as America's need for enthusiastic, universal validation of its killing of Bin Laden, or a demonstration of the efficiency of the world's press in exploiting the Dalai Lama's global popularity to manufacture a faux controversy. - Peter Lee |May 12 | Asia Times

. . . not a single one of these books is written from a non-American centered perspective, except Kissinger's book 'Diplomacy.' What about AJP Taylor's "The Struggle For Mastery in Europe 1848-1918"? It's a masterpiece of diplomatic history and one that should be read by all politicians who have national policy aspirations? Don't get me wrong, either, "Special Providence" is an excellent book too. But where are the books from scholars that look at the world, in toto, and not just the world through the lens of American power? This is, if you ask me, the single most pernicious weakness of the foreign policy elite.

With that in mind, what three books would you recommend an aspiring policy maker read, one of which is fully outside the American-centrist tradition? And any book on the emerging politics of global climate change would be most welcome, too, because as we all know, Al Gore flies around the world in a jet plane polluting everything in sight.

Madeleine Bunting | The Guardian | Apr 22

Greg Mortenson's wild Pakistan tale exposes more than one fantasist – it reveals Americans' delusion about their 'civilising' mission

In the mid-90s an American nurse, Greg Mortenson, was sleeping in his car to save rent so he could fulfil a promise he made to build a school in remote northern Pakistan. Fifteen years later, his book of his epic journey, Three Cups of Tea, has been in the US bestseller list for more than four years; thousands attend his speaker events; he has raised millions for his charity, and built hundreds of schools in the Gilgit-Baltistan region. His book was top of the reading list for US troops deploying to Afghanistan.

It was an extraordinary story – until this week, when it was dismantled in the US programme 60 Minutes and in an ebook by one of Mortenson's former supporters, Jon Krakauer. Mortenson has admitted to "some omissions and compressions" while largely defending his work. But his myth has fallen apart with such astonishing speed that every- one is left wondering how on earth it persisted for so long.

The Independent, By Johann Hari, January 24

The world knows that the Chinese economic boom has led to a huge increase in carbon emissions. But the damage has to stop if global environmental catastrophe is to be averted, says Johann Hari

The world is watching China’s economic surge with understandable awe – while politely and passively ignoring the country’s ecological disintegration.

When the journalist Jonathan Watts was a child, he was told, like so many of us: “If everyone in China jumps at exactly the same time, it will shake the earth off its axis and kill us all.” Three decades later, he stood in the grey sickly smog of Beijing, wheezing and hacking uncontrollably after a short run, and thought – the Chinese jump has begun. He had travelled 100,000 miles criss-crossing China, from the rooftop of Tibet to the deserts of Inner Mongolia and everywhere, he discovered that the Chinese state was embarked on a massive program of environmental destruction. It has turned whole rivers poisonous to the touch, rendered entire areas cancer-ridden, transformed a fertile area twice the size of Britain into desert – and probably even triggered the worst earthquake in living memory.

The consensus is in and there is strong agreement: the US economy is on the path to a sustained recovery. 2011 will be a year of surprises on the upside, and 2012 will be even better. Among a list of the top 25 economists surveyed, not one of them predicts a recession in 2011. There is hardly any investment strategist or economist to be found who sees any risks serious enough to derail the US economy. Here is just a sample of the consensus thinking that is to be found in end-of-the year forecasts:

Peter Robison and Gopal Ratnam | New York | Sept 29

Bloomberg - A senior manager at a company that churns out metals routinely used in U.S. smart bombs pauses in mid-sentence when his phone rings: a Wall Street stockbroker looking for information. He makes a note to have an assistant call back -- someone who is fluent in English, not just Chinese.

“It’s a seller’s market now,” says Bai Baosheng, 43, puffing a cigarette in his office in Baotou, China, where his company sells bags of powder containing a metallic element known as neodymium, vital in tiny magnets that direct the fins of bombs dropped by U.S. Air Force jets in Afghanistan.

A generation after Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping made mastering neodymium and 16 other elements known as rare earths a priority, China dominates the market, with far-reaching effects ranging from global trade friction to U.S. job losses and threats to national security.

Here is a voice of reason in the wilderness of failed notions that comprise our educational policies. National testing damages creativity and hurts global competitiveness. Whenever I hear a politician talk about testing as a key to educational success, I immediately think - there's someone who is indifferent to students and teachers.

Yong Zhao on how our global competitiveness will be damaged by the US government's imposition of high stakes testing

Just as the federal government has announced the awarding of $330 million to two consortiums so that they can develop new national exams, it is more important than ever that people check out this video of one of our best critics of high stakes testing, Yong Zhao.

Edward Wong | Lhasa | July 24

NYT - They come by new high-altitude trains, four a day, cruising 1,200 miles past snow-capped mountains. And they come by military truck convoy, lumbering across the roof of the world.

Han Chinese workers, investors, merchants, teachers and soldiers are pouring into remote Tibet. After the violence that ravaged this region in 2008, China’s aim is to make Tibet wealthier — and more Chinese.

Sudha Ramachandran | Bangalore | Sept 18

Asia Times - A proposed trip by the Dalai Lama in November to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, part of which China claims as its territory, has ruffled feathers in Beijing. The visit by the Tibetan spiritual leader could lead Sino-Indian relations, already tense over alleged Chinese incursions into Indian territory, to deteriorate even further in the coming months.

"We firmly oppose Dalai visiting the so-called 'Arunachal Pradesh'," Jiang Yu, the spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, told Reuters this week. China claims around 90,000 square kilometers of territory in India's northeast, roughly approximating Arunachal Pradesh. It regards the area as "disputed territory" and refers to it as "Southern Tibet".

With India indicating that it will not buckle to Chinese pressure on the issue as it has in the past, a war of words and heightened tension along the nation's frontiers is on the cards. "Arunachal Pradesh is a part of India and the Dalai Lama is free to go anywhere in India," India's Minister of External Affairs S M Krishna said on Wednesday.

Arunachal Pradesh is India's eastern-most state. During the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, China advanced deep into the state, and after briefly occupying it, withdrew. It has continued to lay claim to the area, expressing this in increasingly strident language and alleged intrusions in the last couple of years. It objects to any Indian assertion of sovereignty over Arunachal Pradesh.

Amy Yee | Dharmasala, India | June 29

NYT - Tibetan monks and nuns spend their lives studying the inner world of the mind rather than the physical world of matter. Yet for one month this spring a group of 91 monastics devoted themselves to the corporeal realm of science.

Instead of delving into Buddhist texts on karma and emptiness, they learned about Galileo’s law of accelerated motion, chromosomes, neurons and the Big Bang, among other far-ranging topics.

Many in the group, whose ages ranged from the 20s to 40s, had never learned science and math. In Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries, the curriculum has remained unchanged for centuries.

Andrew Buncombe | June 22

The Independent - After 500 years of autocracy, Tibetan leader calls for democracy

In a speech that underscored the pressures he has had to bear during his life serving as both a spiritual and political leader, the Dalai Lama has said there is no need for his successor to perform the two roles.

In a video clip shown to hundreds of monks, nuns and lay people gathered in the mountain town of Dharamsala, the 73-year-old said it was essential that the Tibetan community in exile embraced democracy if it were to keep step with the wider world.

"The Dalai Lamas held temporal and spiritual leadership over the last 400 to 500 years. It may have been quite useful. But that period is over," said the Nobel prize winner. "Today, it is clear to the whole world that democracy is the best system despite its minor negativities. That is why it is important that Tibetans also move with the larger world community."

Jason Subler | Beijing | Mar 28

Reuters - China marked its inaugural Serfs' Emancipation Day on Saturday with testimonials by Tibetans on the merits of Communist rule, denunciations of the Dalai Lama and vows to crush any attempts at independence.

China declared the annual public holiday in Tibet earlier this year, marking the date in 1959 when Chinese troops took direct control of the government in Lhasa after being brought in to quell an uprising.

In a carefully choreographed ceremony held on a sprawling public square beneath Lhasa's Potala Palace, the government projected its message that its rule brought an end to a cruel feudal system and has improved Tibetans' lives ever since.

Roughly a year after deadly riots shook Lhasa and triggered waves of protests in ethnic Tibetan areas, an audience of some 13,000 Tibetans sat in neat rows as a former serf, a student, military officials and the region's top leaders spoke on the horrors of the "old Tibet" and the merits of Beijing's rule.

Maggie Shields | March 25

BBC - China's move to block YouTube has been criticised by a leading advocacy group that promotes constitutional liberties in the digital age.

...Earlier in the week, the BBC reported from Beijing that China cut off access to the website because it carried a video showing soldiers beating monks and other Tibetans.

Ben Blanchard | Beijing | Mar 22

Reuters - The Tibetan anointed by Beijing as the region's second-ranking spiritual leader was quoted by Chinese state media on Sunday as saying the teachings of Buddhism justify the Communist Party's rule in his remote homeland.

His comments came two weeks after the exiled Dalai Lama said 50 years under Communism had brought "untold suffering" and turned the region he once ruled as spiritual and temporal leader into a "living hell".

Gyaltsen Norbu, recognised by China as the 11th incarnation of the Panchen Lama but spurned by many Tibetans, said the last few decades had brought freedom and prosperity to the people of Tibet, thanks to the "wise" leadership of the Party.

The 19-year-old, writing in an editorial in Party mouthpiece the People's Daily to be published on Monday, cited a line of Buddhist scripture about good leaders leading to happy people.

"What this means to me is that only with wise leaders will the country be peaceful and the people happy," the Panchen Lama said in the article, carried a day early by the official Xinhua news agency.

He said he would continue, as his predecessors did, to uphold the "four great loves" -- of the Communist Party, of socialism, of his own people and of religious belief.

Beijing | Mar 8

AFP - Chinese authorities have imposed a security lockdown in Tibet as the Himalayan region this week marks the 50th anniversary of a failed uprising that sent the Dalai Lama into exile.

Beijing is desperate to prevent protests by monks and nomads after violent unrest last year embarrassed the leadership just ahead of the Olympics in the Chinese capital.

The Dalai Lama has called on his Buddhist followers to remain true to his non-violent cause, while also warning that worsening Chinese repression could provoke further confrontations.

"The situation in Tibet is very tense and discontentment over Chinese rule is simmering," said Tsering Shakya, a Tibetan exile and historian now working as a researcher with the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Tuesday marks half a century since Tibetans rose up against Chinese rule, a brutal period when exiles say more than 80,000 people were killed in China's military response.

Edward Wong | Maqu | Mar 5

NYT -

Enraged nomads stormed through this windswept town on the Tibetan plateau a year ago this month, raiding a police compound, setting fire to squad cars and forcing police officers to flee. To the north, Tibetans on horseback galloped into a schoolyard, ripped down a Chinese flag and hoisted a Tibetan one, shouting “Free Tibet!”

Now, the authorities have imposed an unofficial state of martial law on the vast highlands where ethnic Tibetans live, with thousands of troops occupying areas they fear could erupt in renewed rioting on a momentous anniversary next week. And Beijing is determined to keep foreigners from seeing the mass deployment.

In monasteries and nomad tents, villages and grasslands, the fury of Tibetans against Chinese rule has raged continuously since last year’s riots and the violent repression that followed. They are aware, too, that March 10 marks the 50th anniversary of a failed revolt against Chinese rule that led to the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile in India.

Signs of simmering resistance abound: Just last week, many of China’s six million Tibetans chose not to celebrate Losar, the Tibetan New Year, in order to mourn Tibetans who suffered during last year’s clashes. Monks have held rallies in parts of Qinghai and Sichuan Provinces. Last Friday, a monk from Kirti Monastery in Sichuan lighted himself on fire in a market, prompting security officers to shoot at him, according to Tibetan advocacy groups. Local officials deny the shooting.

Chinese leaders have prepared for the worst, ordering the largest troop deployment since the Sichuan earthquake last spring. This reporter got a rare look at the clampdown because he was recently driven through the Tibetan areas of arid Gansu Province while being detained by the police for 20 hours.

Beijing | February 24

AFP - China has closed Tibet to foreign tourists ahead of next month's highly sensitive 50th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule, tour agencies and other industry people told AFP Tuesday.

The ban comes amid deep tensions in the Himalayan region, with a reported increase in security forces and a call by the Dalai Lama for a boycott of Tibetan New Year celebrations on Wednesday, in protest against Chinese rule.

"Authorities asked tour agents to stop organising foreigners coming to Tibet for tour trips until April 1," an employee at a government-run travel agency in Lhasa, who c

Beijing | Feb 24

AFP - China has closed Tibet to foreign tourists ahead of next month's highly sensitive 50th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule, tour agencies and other industry people told AFP Tuesday.

The reported ban comes amid deep tensions in the Himalayan region, with a reported increase in security forces and a call by the Dalai Lama for a boycott of Tibetan New Year celebrations on Wednesday, in protest against Chinese rule.

"Authorities asked tour agents to stop organising foreigners coming to Tibet for tour trips until April 1," an employee at a government-run travel agency in Lhasa, who could not be named for fear of reprisals, told AFP.

He said the city's tourism bureau had decided this at a meeting in mid-February, although it was unclear when exactly the orders were given.