December 23, 2012

Second Tibetan Monk Burns Himself to Death in Protest

A Tibetan Buddhist monk protesting Chinese policies immolated himself publicly in a Tibetan area of Sichuan Province in southwest China on Monday, an outside advocacy group reported. It was the second such act in the area in the past five months and appeared to reflect resistance to increased Chinese repression of loyalty to Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

The monk was heard calling, “We Tibetan people want freedom,” “Long live the Dalai Lama” and “Let the Dalai Lama return to Tibet,” after he drank gasoline, doused himself with it and set himself alight on a bridge in the center of Daofu, a town in Ganzi County in Sichuan, according to the advocacy group Free Tibet. The group is based in London, but has a network of contacts in Tibet and Tibetan-populated areas elsewhere in China.

Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reported the death of a monk in Daofu, but did not provide details.

Ganzi, known in Tibetan as Kardze, is overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Tibetans. It has been an area of chronic tensions for the Chinese authorities, most related to the country’s Han ethnic majority.

China’s government regards the vast Himalayan region of Tibet as an integral part of China and is sensitive to expressions of support for the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959 and who has accused China of stifling Tibetan culture. The Chinese consider the Dalai Lama a subversive advocate of Tibetan independence, although he has said he only wants greater autonomy for Tibet.

Stephanie Brigden, the director of Free Tibet, identified the monk who killed himself as Tsewang Norbu, 29. She said he was protesting what she described as the harsh treatment of Tibetans following the March 16 immolation by a monk from the Kirti monastery in Aba, or Ngaba in Tibetan, in the same region of Sichuan. She said the repression worsened further when Tibetans in Daofu and elsewhere defied a government ban on celebrating the Dalai Lama’s 76th birthday on July 6.

“We’ve basically seen an escalation in the clamping down,” she said in a telephone interview. “It is not just limited to this area.”

In a news release, Ms. Brigden said her group had “grave concerns” about what could happen in Daofu in the aftermath of the monk’s immolation, and at his monastery, Nyitso. She said that telephone and Internet access had been cut and that the group had “received reports that the army has surrounded the monastery.”

The resilient support for the Dalai Lama among China’s five million Tibetans has taken on increased significance with time. The Dalai Lama has said he may choose his own successor, deviating from the practice in which senior lamas identify each Dalai Lama’s reincarnation after his death. In response, Chinese authorities in Beijing have said they have the authority to name the next Dalai Lama. They have been seeking to promote their own handpicked successor, the Panchen Lama, second only to the Dalai Lama in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy.

The so-called Chinese Panchen Lama, who has spent most of his life in Beijing, went on a politically significant trip last week to a town that is home to a cherished monastery in a Tibetan-populated area of Gansu Province, where he was expected to study and meditate for weeks. Experts on Tibet said the trip appeared to have been part of the Chinese government’s attempt to give the Panchen Lama more legitimacy among monks and other Tibetans by broadening his exposure outside the capital.

 

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/world/asia/16tibet.html?_r=2&partner=MYWAY&ei=5065

India-China Meeting Off Over Dalai Lama

A meeting between Indian and Chinese diplomats has been cancelled after Beijing objected to a scheduled speech in New Delhiby Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, officials said Sunday.

A senior Indian foreign ministry official, who declined to be named, said talks on long-standing border issues that were slated to begin in New Delhi on Monday had been called off.

“Beijing wanted Delhi to cancel the Buddhist meeting where his holiness the Dalai Lama will be speaking on Wednesday,” the official told AFP.

“India refused to accept China’s demand as the leader is free to speak on spiritual matters.”

The Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. He later founded the government in exile in the northern Indian town Dharamshala after being offered refuge.

Tensions over Tibet have risen this year as nine Buddhist monks and two nuns have set themselves alight in ethnically Tibetan parts of southwest China in protest at religious repression.

Beijing last month called the Dalai Lama’s stance on the self-immolations “terrorism in disguise” and said he had “played up such issues to incite more people to follow suit”.

China vilifies the Dalai Lama as a “separatist” who incites violence in Tibet, while the Dalai Lama insists his sole focus is a peaceful campaign for greater autonomy.

He has held fruitless talks through his envoys with Beijing about the status of his Himalayan homeland.

His office on Sunday confirmed that he will be addressing a Buddhist congregation on Wednesday in New Delhi.

The disputed borders between India and China have been the subject of 14 rounds of talks since 1962, when the two nations fought a brief but brutal war over the issue.

Chinese infrastructure build-up along the frontier has become a major source of concern for India, which increasingly sees China as a longer-term threat to its security than traditional rival Pakistan.

Source:

https://news.yahoo.com/india-china-meeting-off-over-dalai-lama-source-082215294.html

Tibetan Nun Burns Herself To Death In China

Nun is 11th ethnic Tibetan this year to have taken own life in region known as centre of defiance against strict Chinese control

A Tibetan nun has burned herself to death in south-west China, Xinhua news agency said, the 11th ethnic Tibetan this year known to have set themselves on fire in a region that has become the centre of defiance against strict Chinese control.

Qiu Xiang, 35, set herself on fire at a road crossing in Dawu county of Ganzi, called Kandze by Tibetans, in Sichuan province, the state news agency said.The nun was from the county’s Tongfoshan village, Xinhua said.

The report said it was unclear why she killed herself and the local government had launched an investigation.

Last week, a Tibetan Buddhist monk doused himself in fuel and set himself ablaze in Ganzi.

Most people in Ganzi and neighbouring Aba, the site of eight self-immolations, are ethnic Tibetan herders and farmers, and many see themselves as members of a wider Tibetan region encompassing the official Tibetan Autonomous Region and other areas across the highlands of China’s west.

China has ruled Tibet with an iron fist since Communist troops marched in in 1950. Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled nine years later after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

The Dalai Lama, whom China condemns as a supporter of violent separatism, led hundreds of monks, nuns and lay Tibetans in prayer in his adopted homeland in India in late October to mourn those who have burned themselves to death.The Dalai Lama denies advocating violence and insists he wants only real autonomy for his homeland.

But the Chinese foreign ministry has said the Dalai Lama should take the blame for the burnings, and repeated Beijing’s line that Tibetans are free to practise their Buddhist faith.

Source: https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/03/tibetan-nun-burns-death-china

Tibet: What can other countries do?

At least 11 monks and nuns have set themselves on fire this year such is their desperation and condemnation of China’s repressive policies in their homeland.

Is it an effective form of protest? Will China change its policies?

Not likely, without clear and consistent pressure on the international stage, argues Professor Robert Barnett, director of Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia University.

“We are not seeing strong signals coming from the major Western powers. We need to find a way to articulate these issues without seeming to impose on China,” Barnett said.

GlobalPost talked with Barnett about which countries are better at dealing with China, why changes China does make don’t necessarily get noticed, and whether focusing on what’s going on inside Tibet could actually be doing some harm.

What can, or should, other countries do about Tibet?

Basically, China assumes that it should push its objectives until it meets resistance. Because it sees itself as growing and recovering a lost historic role in a hostile environment, its underlying strategy is to pursue its strategic objectives up to the point where its competitors prevent it from going further — a mode that is typical of a nation at this point in its arc of growth.

This means that other countries need to maintain exceptionally clear definitions of what they will accommodate in terms of their interests, and that includes issues of rights and responsibilities. That’s easy when it comes to external affairs, where the Chinese recognize that we all have a role and interest, but we all have to find skillful and effective ways to explain why there should be limitations to Chinese action too, when it comes to affairs that they are convinced are internal, like Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, even sometimes the South China Seas. But it’s difficult, because these issues are very sensitive and complex when international players are involved.

We also have to think how diplomatic language is understood by China. For example, symbolic and ceremonial aspects of diplomacy are seen in Beijing as much more important than they are in the West. China knows that whether a US president meets the Dalai Lama, and whether he does so in a public or a private room, could conceal a larger strategic shift.

More importantly, Chinese diplomats carefully read the signs of diplomatic attention. Silence is very vocal — if you raise an issue and then don’t mention it again, it is taken as a concession. If you even slightly moderate the language you use to refer to it, it’s seen as a major concession. Backing off is a major signal, so Westerners have to learn that on some issues they have to learn to maintain a practice of repeated, consistent restatements of a principled position. Dull but important.

China is a major world power, but it still seems very sensitive to world perceptions of its policies. This doesn’t mean that other countries should be insulting or aggressive toward China. It does mean that Western governments need to be much clearer and more consistent in stating what their concerns are, and explaining why they have any right or interests to speak on internal issues.

Are you seeing Western governments that are doing this?

There has been more or less a complete collapse on policy consistency across the Western block in terms of knowing how to respond to assertive modern Chinese diplomatic skill. In western Europe, it’s a total write-off. They are easily divided, since they are numerous, and so are terrified of upsetting China. They’ve had years of China saying “If you criticize me, I won’t buy your next Airbus” and have failed to work out a way to deal with that strategy. It’s like watching someone throw dollar bills — or, rather, euro notes — into a crowd.

America has been more consistent, actually. They do try to maintain a clearer line and a more skillful sense of how to respond to various maneuvers. And America has said consistently on Tibet that China should change its policies there because they’re counterproductive, which is useful language since it appeals to their interests, not just ours.

But the most interesting gestures have come from countries in Scandinavia and eastern Europe, the latter presumably because they understand Leninist traditions of diplomacy.

We are not seeing strong signals coming from the major Western powers. We need to find a way to articulate these issues without seeming to impose on China.

Can you see anything shifting in the near future?

Actually the Chinese have made some micro-changes to their policies in Tibet as a result of pressure from both outside and inside, but they are so small that most specialists don’t even mention them.

For example, the new party secretary in Lhasa arranged last month for almost all Tibetan university graduates to have jobs. This week he said that all monks — of course he only means the few recognized officially — will have pensions and minimum allowances. They are certainly pouring more money into the area now, especially the villages, and though the effects of this are very much disputed, it shows a certain urgency of response.

We can be skeptical, and we should be to some extent — the methods of Chinese modernization in Tibet and elsewhere are rushed, manipulative, top-down and so on. That’s our responsibility in a situation where a people is not allowed to speak out.

But these moves are proofs of principle: they indicate that pressure works. That does not mean that all kinds of pressure work of course, and inside pressure is much more important than outside pressure. But it suggests that a skillful balance of the two does sometimes get noticed.

Could there be significant changes?

Perhaps the way Tibet is run by the Chinese could be changed, at least to some extent. The question is whether the changes that will come will be enough. It’s very doubtful, given the extreme conservatism of the current leadership. Still, when you live under an autocracy, sometimes small changes can make a much bigger difference than expected to the people living there. And you never know what they might lead to — which is also why the Chinese are so scared of making them. I don’t mean independence, but a broader civil society.

But there are shifts taking place of a more troubling variety. While people are focused on terrible tragedies in Tibet, a lot is being done in Nepal to the exiled Tibetan community there. It is now apparently illegal for them even to have certain private prayer ceremonies. Police raided a Tibetan cultural show in Kathmandu, a classical opera performance, recently. Thousands of Tibetans have been refused exit permits to come to the US, even though the US has prepared to issue visas. It’s incredible, inconceivable within what is supposedly a democratic society.

There’s no real dispute that this is all done directly at the demand of China. So Nepal, on this issue, is being run internally by its neighbor. I experienced this when I was last there a few years ago. I was surrounded and escorted at one point for a few hours by un-uniformed Chinese police when I was in a border area. They didn’t realize I could understand what they were saying.

And last week, there were news reports from India of a major Bollywood film being ordered by a government agency there to cut a scene that featured a “Free Tibet” flag. These are clearly challenges to democractic principles in those countries. They are fundamental shifts, but they are not discussed — and they are always done without public debate. In those neighboring areas, Chinese policy is happening all around us.

So, the focus inside Tibet is a distraction?

It is making us look in one direction while a lot is going on in other directions. Things are changing, just not in the direction we might like to see. We shouldn’t be alarmist about it, it’s all part of the normal chess game that the big political players are involved in, adjustments to regional balance and spheres of influence, but it requires attention and alertness.

Self-immolations are in the news. Besides reports today of a Chinese man who set himself on fire in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, China is also facing a wave of self-immolations in eastern Tibet.

At least 11 monks and nuns have set themselves on fire this year in protest of China’s grip on their homeland. Last week, the Dalai came forward and blamed China for the spate of tragic acts, saying its approach in Tibet amounts to “cultural genocide.”

For some, it was a welcome message from a figure who, inevitably, is at the center of any news out of Tibet. For others, it began the well-worn cycle that starts with the Dalai Lama condemning China, moves to China condemning the Dalai Lama, and ends without much changed.

“It’s hard to see new ways to describe the situation. But we have to keep on trying to describe it,” said Robbie Barnett, director of the Modern Tibetan Studies program at Columbia University.

What should the Dalai Lama do?

GlobalPost spoke with Barnett about the likelihood that China will make some changes, what the Dalai Lama can really do, and why no one is an idle commentator on this issue.

The majority of Tibetans who have self-immolated this year have died. It’s clear these deaths are the result of more than a decade of repressive policies in Tibet. What is a helpful frame to make sense of this in the West?

Professor Robbie Barnett: We would have to imagine a government here treating universities as, let’s say, mafia centers or criminal cults that have to be repeatedly invaded by police. That’s roughly how the major Tibetan monasteries are being viewed now in China.

Local officials in the areas where these self-immolations have occurred, mostly around Kirti monastery in Ngaba, seem to have decided to go further with security policies than other areas. They are using techniques that had been used before only after major incidents, such as blockading a monastery, and cutting off food and water, sometimes for weeks, in response to a single-person protest.

So it looks like the area around Kirti has been used as laboratory for ways to manage the Tibetan population. It is an understatement to say that the experiment has not been successful.

What are the chances China will change its harsh policies?

In one sense the chances are higher than we think: The policies that are most provocative are not that difficult to reverse. Some Chinese officials also think them excessive — most Tibetans do — and it’s in China’s interest to reverse them. But there is no sign of the political will to do so.

In China, there is in general a cynical view of protests by Tibetans and other nationalities. Because there are some positive discrimination policies in place in China for Tibetans, many Chinese think that any protests by them are just attempts to get more funding and more privileges from Beijing.

They view Tibetan complaints as being all about the economy and about getting access to more economic goods. In that view, culture and religion are seen as secondary to economics, and a community that gets richer because of the state is expected to be satisfied with that.

There is also the fear of the internal domino effect. China is afraid that if it shows any flexibility to Tibetans, that will lead to more demands, which will ultimately lead to a heightened sense of Tibetan nationalism and demands for independence, which in turn will trigger demands for independence from other nationalities in China — and the areas inhabited by those nationalities cover some 60 percent of China’s landmass.

It’s not that China does not want Tibetans or others to have distinctive identities — people there enjoy superficial cultural exoticism and variety as much as Westerners do. But they want these to be ethnic identities, not national ones. They want them to see themselves as “ethnic groups” or “cultures” and not as “nationalities.” This seems to be why Chinese officials ordered in about 1995 that only the English word “ethnic” should be used to describe them, not the former official term, “nationality.”

So, the problems that stop them changing their policies in Tibet are political rather than practical; this is a very conservative leadership. There are many things they could do, practically speaking. They could limit the migration of non-Tibetans to these areas. They could appoint culturally-literate Tibetans as local leaders and create social partnerships with monasteries in terms of education and other issues. They could have true bilingual education policies, and they could stop the demonization of the monks and the practice of insulting the Dalai Lama.

If the Dalai Lama took a strong stand against the self-immolations, would they stop?

That’s a reasonable question that’s being asked by a lot of people. But it’s more complex than it seems if one considers the history and the context. The Dalai Lama has asked protesters to stop on many similar occasions in the past — when Tibetans have staged hunger strikes in India, for example. He has said that suicides for political reasons shouldn’t be encouraged. His government has said repeatedly that it does not encourage self-immolations.

But in the past when the Chinese have asked him to say something to calm the situation inside Tibet, and when he has done it, the Chinese officials have then demanded that he say something else that they want, as opposed to making a concession in return. This hugely damages trust, I think. That’s what happened in 2008: A major crisis was used as a bargaining opportunity to get the Dalai Lama to help. He tried to do that, and they then made more demands and more outrageous ones, while doing nothing on their side to calm the situation.

When we ask this question, we are imagining a diplomatic situation in which the Chinese side and the Tibetan side are working together to solve a problem. But that is not the situation, unfortunately.

Each opportunity is being used to try to humiliate the other side, at least by the Chinese officials in charge of talks. It’s not quite the same on the Tibetan side. In academic terms, the Tibetan negotiating moves are “communicative,” basically trying to persuade the other side or to appeal to emotion, while the Chinese manuevers are “strategic,” trying to cripple or weaken the other party. This is typical of asymmetrical negotiations.

What is needed is a new approach from both sides. The Tibetan side has been asking for talks for over a year, and they are waiting for the Chinese side to set up a mechanism for talks. So, it’s not that the Dalai Lama should be saying something, but it’s the two sides that should be coming together for talks, or have a mechanism for dealing with crises.

One thing that is obvious here, is that there needs to be a hotline for emergencies. A point of contact between the two sides for when the situation gets really dire.

But what can, or should, the Dalai Lama do?

His government has said it does not encourage these acts but understands the reasons for them. I think that’s a useful articulation of the issues.

The Dalai Lama is now saying strong things, like his most recent comments on China committing “cultural genocide” in Tibet. He seems to feel it is his role to criticize China in strong terms. It’s hardly surprising that he would feel frustrated, but is it the right thing for him to use such terms?

We have to remember that we’re all pawns in a larger situation, where each side is trying to get each of us to criticize the other. That’s very strong objective in China’s policies, and for Tibetans too. So I’m not sure it’s for me to tell the Dalai Lama what to do. We are not just idle commentators.

Everything is electric on this issue.

 

Source: https://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/the-rice-bowl/tibet-self-immolations-dalai-lama-china-foreign-policy-diplomacy

Target China: A deeper look at the globalist blitzkrieg’s final destination

Far from the Founding Father’s ideal representative republic, China has garnered a reputation as one of the most repressive regimes on earth. While some of this is well earned, much of it is due to the unsavory legacy left by Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” which to this day is still being carefully and systematically dismantled. Another large factor at play is the entirely disingenuous and very much hypocritical campaign the Western corporate-financier oligarchy has waged against the 1.3 billion strong nation.

While lofty, poorly articulated ideals like “democracy” and “freedom” are used by the West as leverage to divide and weaken the nation, real affronts to human rights and freedom, such as China’s “one-child policy” or the exploitation of labor are either ignored or wildly applauded by the West. In one New York Times op-ed by US Representative James Scheuer titled, “America, the U.N. and China’s Family Planning,” Scheuer states:

“China’s approach to family planning may seem foreign to Western traditions, but that is natural considering that China’s whole culture is vastly different from ours. The Chinese program relies on an incessant drumbeat of persuasion and peer pressure, which is undergirded by individuals’ sense of responsibility to society and family, which supersedes any perception they may have of their own personal rights.”

In other words, Scheuer is justifying not only usurping human rights, but the article goes on to reveal, he is also defending the 36 million dollars the US funds the UN in assisting nations like China to enforce such policies. Scheuer, in the truly intellectually bankrupt tradition of Malthusians everywhere, would go on to state that overpopulation was causing disease and poverty in nations like Haiti and throughout Africa - willfully ignorant of the fact that education and technology are actually the missing ingredients.

Leveraging “Human Rights”

The hypocrisy doesn’t end there. The corporate-financier run Western media has been recently beating their chests over the imprisonment of Nobel Laureate and “human rights activist” Liu Xiaobo, a proponent of ending China’s strong central government and politically active military in favor of a weak, Western-style system run by corruptible, feckless, incompetent leadership that invites multinational corporations to entropically infest state institutions and seize control of the nation’s people and resources. Liu Xiaobo’s support goes beyond the media’s scornful chastisement of China’s government on his behalf, and includes “pro-bono” legal aid from the Council on Foreign Relations lined ”Freedom Now” organization. Readers may remember “Freedom Now” from their extensive involvement in supporting the Syrian opposition leading the recent unrest against the Assad government.

Freedom Now is also providing legal services for Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer also imprisoned in China. Gao had written an open letter to the US Congress detailing human rights violations in China, and his family currently resides in the United States. Council on Foreign Relations minion Jerome Cohen, Canadian MP Irwin Cotler, and former Canadian MP David Kilgourare personally leading the campaigns for both Liu Ziaobo and Gao Zhisheng. All three, are also involved in meddling around the globe in similarly hypocritical gambits revolving around “human rights activists” who just so happen to be fighting governments the West would like to see changed.

While it may seem noble to champion for human rights, it is a matter of fact that men like Cohen, Cotler, and Kilgour, and the entire Freedom Now organization along with the CFR that populates its membership and the foundations that fund it, are amongst the greatest enemies of human rights and human freedom on earth. The Council on Foreign Relations has tirelessly repeated its goal of establishing a one world government, with members working ceaselessly to achieve it and their publications over the decades perpetually reflecting this ambition. This is a world government that is of, by, and for the corporate-financier oligarchy’s interests, and their interests alone.

This gambit of leveraging the issue of human rights for geopolitical gain is clearly illustrated in another pertinent example, directly related to China’s present predicament. Globalist lawyer and lobbyist Robert Amsterdam, of the Chatham House’s Amsterdam & Peroff is currently cultivating two other clients as points of leverage.

From “Globalist Page: Robert Amsterdam:”

His [Amsterdam's] two most recent and perhaps most notorious cases involve one a Russian oligarch named Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and a Thai police colonel-turned-billionaire tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra. Khodorkovsky is guilty and indeed sitting in a Siberian prison for embezzling billions. His Thai counterpart, Thaksin, also has two years coming to him for immense fraud. And while both are being defended by Amsterdam as “political victims” what is never mentioned, indeed buried deeply are the extra-legal, meddling affiliations both men have with the globocratic elite that undermine their political aspirations with megalithic, even treasonous conflicts of interest.

Accomplished researcher, William Engdahl, points out some very alarming connections and trends that served as the real basis for Khodorkovsky’s current Siberian lodging. It seems that Khodorkovsky wasn’t just embezzling money or involved in breathtaking displays of corruption, such was the nature of the times he came into power. It was rather his connections with the West, in particular Henry Kissinger and “Lord” Jacob Rothschild who were sitting on what Engdahl calls a George Soros Open Society-styled “Open Russian Foundation.”

Worth repeating indefinitely, is the role these “foundations” and the networks of meddlesome NGOsthey maintain play as the next greatest threat to national sovereignty behind invading armies and the IMF’s economic hitmen.

Using both his wealth and his Western organized NGO networks, Khodorkovsky set out on an ambitious political campaign to seize for himself the Russian presidency from which he would undoubtedly repay his foreign backers with the economic liberalization (read: sellout) of the Russian Federation.

With uncanny exactitude, Thaksin Shinwatra attempted the same “soft-coup” in Thailand. He was aCarlyle Group adviser while holding office in then PM Chavalit’s New Aspiration Party which oversaw the 1997 IMF’s intrusion and controlled economic implosion of the Thai economy. He would later become PM himself in 2001 and through wealth procured through similarly fraudulent, though not unprecedented means, he began consolidating power, eliminating checks and balances, and preparing the liberalization of the Thai economy on behalf of his foreign backers. On the eve of the military coup that overthrew his government, he was literally standing in New York City giving a progress report to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Since his ouster from power, he has been backed by fellow Carlyle man James Baker and hisBaker Botts law firm, International Crisis Group’s Kenneth Adelman and his Edelman Public Relations firm, and now Robert Amsterdam’s Amsterdam & Peroff. His proxy political party maintains a “people’s power” organization supported by several National Endowment for DemocracyNGOs including “Prachatai,” an “independent media organization” that coordinates the “people’s power” propaganda efforts.

In both Khordovsky’s and Thaksin’s case we come back to Robert Amsterdam, who now concurrently meddles in both Russian and Thai affairs using these two overtly mired convicted criminals as leverage to push not only the legal cases for which he is responsible, but the continuation of his clients’ political objectives of undermining Russia’s and Thailand’s establishments, which in turn represent the continuation of the “globocrats’” agenda.

While Russia possesses the intelligence and military apparatuses to suppress significant internal unrest caused by Western backed NGOs and the continued and now lost cause of Khordovsky, the perceived “injustice” Robert Amsterdam accuses Russia of gives the West the moral high-ground to meddle in Russia’s surrounding geography, notably color revolutions, NATO expansion, and political destabilization in Eastern Europe.

Robert Amsterdam is also attempting to lend Thaksin Shinawatra and his organized mob the same credibility and moral high-ground ahead of yet another attempted overthrow of the Thai government this coming spring. While even Thaksin’s mob leaders themselves have admitted on numerous occasions to having armed men involved in the bloodbath that ensued in 2010, Robert Amsterdam is now releasing a report that retroactively rewrites history and absolves them of their admissions. He also misses no opportunity to not only defend his “clients” (he also concurrently defends Thaksin’s “red” mob) but calls on the Thai government to resign, as per the globocrat’s aspirations of regime change and the subsequent economic liberalization under the re-installed Thaksin regime.

This then, is the same gambit being played out in China. Russia is being targeted as the other significant partner in the Shanghai Cooperative which is the focal point of the West’s foreign ambitions, from which all other geopolitical policy is driven. Thailand of course constitutes part of China’s so-called “String of Pearls,” or one of many nations that reside in China’s potential sphere of influence as it rises to power. Enticing nations like Thailand to remain aligned to the West has long since failed and a more aggressive and robust response has been formulated, namely color revolution leading to regime change. The West however, may just as well settle for perpetual destabilization to balk China’s rise.

String of Pearls: Encircling China

The term “String of Pearls” is taken from the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute’s report “String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power across the Asian Littoral.” Throughout the report, China’s efforts to secure its oil lifeline from the Middle East to its shores in the South China Sea are examined as are means to maintain American hegemony throughout the Indian and Pacific Ocean. The premise is that, should Western policy wonks and paper-pushers fail to entice China into participating in the “international system” as responsible stakeholders (fall in line,) an increasingly confrontational posture must be taken to contain the rising nation.

Looking at events today, it appears that enticement has failed, and that the worst case scenarios discussed within the report have not only been put into play, but have thus far proven ineffective. Understanding this report and superimposing its implications upon a global map of today’s conflicts, we see a nearly perfect match.

Middle East: Destabilization efforts and regime change in the Middle East headed by the US State Department aim at controlling and disrupting China’s oil supply. We have seen how the transformation of the Middle East was meticulously planned and entirely coordinated by the West, despite claims that it was spontaneous. With the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt now on record having been supported and funded by the US State Department, and with the State Department now openly funding organizations like the BBC to “combat” Chinese censorship, the failed Chinese “Jasmine Revolution” appears to be more of a poorly veiled attack on China than an uprising of the people.

Though the “Jasmine Revolution” in China was a failure, the now more forceful reordering of the Arab world is setting the stage for the elimination of Iran, after which China and Russia will be further isolated, and further “encircled.”

Pakistan: In building China’s presence throughout Asia, cooperation with emerging giants like India and the populous Pakistan is in its best interest. So is stability. In order to shorten the trip oil must take to reach China, a transit corridor through Pakistan has been devised and a naval base constructed in Gwadar in Pakistan’s southwest Baluchistan province.

China’s holdings in Baluchistan have been under constant threat by both internal meddling by the US in Pakistan itself and on the borders of Baluchistan as part of the 10 year military occupation of Afghanistan, particularly the Helmand and Kandahar provinces which border Baluchistan. The globalist “National Interest” magazine published a February 2011 article titled “Free Baluchistan” which openly called for carving Baluchistan out of Pakistan:

“Most important, it [the United States] should aid the 6 million Baluch insurgents fighting for independence from Pakistan in the face of growing ISI repression. Pakistan has given China a base at Gwadar in the heart of Baluch territory. So an independent Baluchistan would serve U.S. strategic interests in addition to the immediate goal of countering Islamist forces.”

Such irresponsible statements coming from the real authors of US foreign policy should be taken as a serious threat by both the Pakistani and Chinese governments. It should be no surprise that these “Baluch insurgents” are being employed across the border in Iran as well.

The same author, Selig Harrison of the foundation-funded Center for International Policy, elaborated further on Pakistani-Chinese relations in a recent March 2011 article titled “The Chinese Cozy Up to the Pakistanis.” In it is described the joint development of Pakistan’s northern Gilgit-Baltistan region and its forming of a gateway into Chinese territory. While Harrison is able to enumerate an impressive list of benefits both nations are reaping from this relationship, all he is able to offer as a possible US response is the reiteration of starting a full-blown insurrection within Baluchistan:

“To counter what China is doing in Pakistan, the United States should play hardball by supporting the movement for an independent Baluchistan along the Arabian Sea and working with Baluch insurgents to oust the Chinese from their budding naval base at Gwadar. Beijing wants its inroads into Gilgit and Baltistan to be the first step on its way to an Arabian Sea outlet at Gwadar.”

In reading the piece, we see another example of leveraging human rights, with Harrison shamelessly able to go from openly admitting to using the Baluch insurgents in a bid to expel the Chinese, to citing Amnesty International and humanitarian concerns as a proposed narrative for justifying US involvement. This is a familiar globalist ploy, and one that is playing out in Libya under UNSC r.1973.

Southeast Asia: China has been developing infrastructure throughout Southeast Asia as well in a bid to create multiple avenues to and from its territory. In Myanmar (Burma) they are developing a deep sea port, an oil pipeline and a highway network that runs from the Bay of Bengal to the Myanmar-China border in the north. The Chinese in 2008 completed a large highway project through the mountainous terrain of Laos, connecting Kunming, China with northeast Thailand. China, Laos, and Thailand are now developing plans to create a high speed rail link between the 3 nations which would ultimately connect China to Singapore.

The West in response to China’s growing influence in the region has deferred to the “String of Pearls” strategy and is attempting to contain China by fostering instability in both Myanmar and Thailand. This attempts to install servile, pro-Western regimes and by doing so, the globalists would be able to sever China’s newly proposed links and force it to continue relying on the Malacca Strait.

In Myanmar, another Nobel Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been leading the opposition and has garnered support from every globalist cadre, think-tank, and organization imaginable. She was a finalist in the Chatham House Prize 2011, and not surprisingly a benefactor of Freedom Now’s services as well. Aung San Suu herself, was born into an immensely wealthy and politically well connected family. She studied abroad, worked for the UN in New York City, and received a Ph.D from the University of London before returning to Myanmar to lead the “pro-democracy” movement. Whatever her convictions may really be, the West has fully hijacked her movement as a means of removing the current military junta and replacing it with one more conducive to their corporate agenda, which most assuredly has nothing to do with “democracy for the people”

In 2007 there was the so-called “Saffron Revolution,” made a spectacle by the corporate-owned media, but gained little ground. Despite the rhetoric, the artificial aura of credibility and heroism built-up around yet another Nobel Peace Prize wearing crowbar trying to pry out another obstacle of globalization, China’s heavily invested presence inside Myanmar makes the prospect of regime change highly unlikely.

In Thailand the globalist tool of choice is Thaksin Shinwatra and his “red shirt” color revolution. He and his Western backers have attempted twice, in 2009 and 2010 to overthrow the Thai government with increasingly violent street mobs. This year, a combination of mob leaders being released from prison, the announcement of upcoming elections, and a “convenient” border skirmish with neighboring Cambodia, has taken the wind from the “red” mobs’ sails. Likely wanting to ride the wave of destabilization in the Arab world, they now lack both credibility and any conceivable justification to come out into the streets.

Thailand has also been deepening its ties with China and distancing itself from the West. Repeated rows between the US and the Thai government over intellectual property rights along with theproposal of Tobin taxes aimed squarely at the unraveling international bankers residing in London and on Wall Street all but ensures this chasm widens further.

To a lesser extent, the US has been competing with China in countries like Cambodia, where free-market payoffs and military aid is offered by America while mega-infrastructure projects like rail and dams are on offer from China. Cambodian strongman Hun Sen must be looking at the Middle East with the realization that he is an endangered species and that no amount of appeasement will ultimately save him from globalization. And appease the globalists he has. Nearly 50% of Cambodia’s landmass has been sold to foreign investors and at a great humanitarian cost. While the Western media has been wringing its hands over Libya and Syria, it has barely mentioned at all the misdeeds of Cambodia’s Hun Sen against his own people. With Hun Sen recently leaning toward China, this corporate media self-censorship may not last long.

In several instances, these efforts to destabilize China’s peripheries cross over into China itself. Tibet has long been a point of leverage against Beijing, combining nearly ever trick in the globalists’ book from the Nobel Laureate Dali Lama complete with his own Hollywood-made personality cult, to human rights cases, to arming and backing sedition and unrest throughout the region.

Conclusion

Of course, by offering China a commanding role in the emerging “international system” it is hoped that given enough coercive pressure it will acquiesce in becoming a “responsible stakeholder.” As we see on a smaller scale in Libya, pressure, both militarily and economically, aims at causing divides within any given regime in hopes that enough support can be extorted to effect the globalists’ desired changes. Reports like the Brookings Institute’s “The Advantages of an Assertive China: Responding to Beijing’s Abrasive Diplomacy” says as much in regards to prodding and leading China along.

Disrupting China’s oil supply, encircling them with a wave of destabilization along with stoking domestic tension internally, all aims at frustrating their ambitions as a sovereign nation while creating a viable combine of defectors solely interested in their self-preservation. This combine can then effectively steer China toward servile obedience within the globalists’ unipolar “international system.” It is a delicate balance of both pressure and enticement, constantly refined and adjusted, simultaneously applied and systematically monitored.

As more pressure is overtly applied on China, via the brazen “Jasmine Revolution” and increasingly aggressive destabilization efforts around China’s borders and throughout the Arab world where it receives the majority of its oil imports, it appears that the regime has weighed the empty promises and paper empire of the globalists against the 1.3 billion people of China who demand pragmatic, not political solutions to their immediate problems. Most certainly, these 1.3 billion people pose a more immediate threat to the survival of the Chinese ruling regime.

Meeting these demands is done via industry, education, technology, and tangible progress. Policies, including the “one child policy” glowingly appraised by US Representative Scheuer, is an invasive, unpopular measure that is unsustainable and only partially addresses concerns like pollution and poverty. It is also a policy the Chinese government is in the process of rolling back.

As the globalists build financial networks of fiat paper, the Chinese are building networks of high-speed rail throughout their nation and beyond their borders. They are building real, tangible infrastructure from neighboring Laos to the continent of Africa. What possible incentive besides the threat of chaos and upheaval can the West offer China and its “String of Pearls” that solves both the immediate problem of self-preservation of regimes and the multitude of problems of the people under these regimes?

The West’s ineptitude is not wholly unprecedented in history. Many empires have been buried by this sort of degenerate, runaway greed exhibited by the globalist corporate-financier oligarchies - often times replaced by a more pragmatic, constructive power like China. However, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that a certain “strategy of tension” is at play, where a purposefully oafish and aggressive West drives and unifies the otherwise fiercely independent nations of Asia and the Shanghai Cooperative together, only to be folded into the global government at a later time.

Particularly in Southeast Asia, much of China’s development is being coordinated by the suspiciously globalist “ASEAN” organization. Not only does ASEAN closely resemble other institutes of the West’s unipolar model of globalization, but it interfaces with it seamlessly, with many of its greatest proponents being unabashed members of the Western globalist elite.

While rail-links, highways, and infrastructure that mutually benefit participating nations are not necessarily a bad thing, some of the free-trade agreements proposed and pushed through by China are nearly as one-sided and damaging as any US FTA. Foreign ownership laws may not have been changed by these Chinese FTA’s, but ASEAN seeks to collectively lower such barriers by 2015.

China should not be looked to as a hero to rescue nations from the creep of the globalist corporate-financier oligarchs. While China may really be battling these oligarchs today, uniting under an analogous model of world government vis-a-vis the Washington consensus only makes it that much easier for the globalists to absorb a larger prize should China fail, or should the Chinese have already agreed to “responsible stakeholding” behind closed doors.

China’s real affronts to humanity must be continuously exposed and cited as failures, and efforts to move away from grotesque and invasive policies like population control and social engineering should be encouraged and cited as real progress. So too should China’s current stance of across-the-board non-interference within the borders of other nations. Similarly, its current dedication to solving problems with technical, pragmatic solutions involving technology, education, and expanding superior infrastructure should also be encouraged and cited as a viable model of progress.

Ultimately, whatever the end game may be, personal and local independence along with a paradigm shift away from centralized governance and corporate domination can ensure globalism by any name does not prevail. We must commit ourselves to an effort to make real freedom, real progress, and national sovereignty the global consensus, not the morally bankrupt, interdependent, antiquated, and degenerate policies of world governance - regardless of who it supposedly falls under, the West or Asia.

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/04/target-china-deeper-look-at-globalist.html

Tibetans in US denounce China ‘propaganda’

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Tibetans rallied outside of China’s embassy in Washington to demand greater freedoms, denouncing Beijing for its commemorations of the territory’s “peaceful liberation.”

Shouting “Free Tibet” and “China is a liar,” more than 20 Tibetans and supporters criticized Beijing for celebrating the 60th anniversary of the territory’s incorporation but banning observance of the Dalai Lama’s birthday.

“We wanted to show the world that the Chinese propaganda is not fooling anyone,” said Tenzin Dorjee, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, the advocacy group that organized the protest.

“Tibet has a stronger desire for freedom now than ever,” he said. “We need to show the world that Tibet can’t be stopped by the Chinese government.”

In Washington’s high-security embassy district, the activists handed out fliers called “17 Points of Disagreement,” a play on the China’s “17 Points of Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet” in 1951.

China sent troops into Tibet in 1950 and nine years later the Dalai Lama, the predominantly Buddhist region’s spiritual leader, fled into exile in India. The Dalai Lama has since built a wide global following and is visiting Washington to lead a religious ritual known as a Kalachakra.

The Dalai Lama says he is peacefully seeking greater rights for Tibetans. The US State Department in its latest human rights report charged that China has severely restricted freedoms in Tibet and other ethnic minority regions.

Beijing says it has brought progress to Tibet and in a white paper Monday wrote that Tibetans have been linked to China’s majority Han ethnic group “since ancient times.”

 

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/07/tibetans-in-us-denounce-china.html

Dalai Lama: ‘Cultural Genocide’ Behind Self-Immolations

TIBET

The Dalai Lama has blamed Beijing’s “cultural genocide” for a wave of self-immolations among monks and nuns in ethnic Tibetan parts of Sichuan.

The Tibetan spiritual leader, speaking in Japan, said hard-line officials had created a “desperate” situation.

Eleven young Tibetans have set themselves on fire this year in apparent protest against Chinese rule.

The most recent was a nun in Dawu county, who died after setting herself on fire last week.

“Chinese communist propaganda create (a) very rosy picture,” the Dalai Lama told journalists in Tokyo.

“But actually, including many Chinese from mainland China who visit Tibet, they all have the impression things are terrible.”

“Some kind of policy, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place.”

‘Moral Bottom Line’

Most of the incidents have taken place in Aba county, near the Tibetan Kirti monastery. A total of nine monks and two nuns are reported to have set themselves on fire in Sichuan province this year.

The Tibetan government-in-exile says six of those involved have died.

“(In the) last 10, 15 years, there were some kind of hard-liner Chinese officials,” the Dalai Lama said. “So that’s why you see these sad incidents have happened due to (this) desperate sort of situation.”

The US has also expressed concern in recent days.

“We have … repeatedly urged the Chinese government to address its counter-productive policies in Tibetan areas that have created tensions,” State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said on Friday.

China has blamed the Dalai Lama for the self-immolations. State-run Xinhua news agency reported that the latest case was “masterminded and instigated by the Dalai Lama clique.”

“Not condemning self-immolations but playing them up and inciting others to follow examples is challenging the common conscience and moral bottom line of human kind,” Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said last week.

The Tibetan government-in-exile rejects the suggestion it is instigating events.

In March 2008, the largest anti-China protests in two decades erupted in Tibet and spread to ethnic Tibetan areas of surrounding provinces.

Tibetans say that Chinese rule and the large-scale migration of Han Chinese are eroding their culture and traditions. They says that Beijing does not allow them to practise their religion freely.

Beijing says it is raising standards of living in the region with its investment, and so providing Tibetans with better lives. It says Tibetans have religious freedom.

 

Source: https://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/316-20/8308-dalai-lama-cultural-genocide-behind-self-immolations