The Dalai Lama is now visiting Australia. The usual ructions are being made over whether various marks of esteem should or not be paid to him, in the currency of meetings with Government ministers. The thing that puzzles me is why, leaving aside those to whom he is a religious mentor, anyone would bother to meet him. If you are supportive of or indifferent to the Chinese occupation of Tibet, you wouldn't cross your own tracks by giving him house-room. That makes sense enough - but if you support the independence of Tibet there's no point in knowing him either.
Since fleeing Tibet, in 1959, the Dalai lama has achieved... absolutely nothing! The gradual obliteration of the indigenous Tibetan culture and the creeping genocide by importation of Han Chinese has progressed unstinted. If one analyses the policy he espouses in the context of similar historical events, there's a tendency which I think is quite unusual. Consider, for example, the behaviour of de Gaulle and the light in which it places the Dalai Lama. What sort of "exiled leader" preaches accommodation and submission to the occupier and oppressor of his homeland? The Dalai Lama 's ability to provoke Chinese hostility is utterly at variance with and out of proportion to his actual impact on the course of events. In fact, it's caused me to develop a certain suspicion: What if the Dalai Lama is actually a sidetracking decoy who is operating under the direction of Beijing? Sounds crazy? Well, it wouldn't be this first time in the history of the world that a scam like that was played: The Soviets had a fine line in similar activities; the Soviet-era Russian Orthodox Church was KGB from top to bottom.
How and why would this work? Simple; it attracts all the media attention and political heat towards a person who really isn't a threat to Chinese control of Tibet. Like the bogus "global warming" debate that keeps the real heat off the carbon fuel industries, the Dalai Lama's hotly-disputed peregrinations provide a sponge-issue that soaks up energy that might otherwise go towards actually doing something. Like a trade embargo. Like supporting an effective armed insurgency (unlike the old ineffective one). Like an honest-to-God armed intervention on the model of the Korean Police Action. Perhaps the perennial choleric outbursts from Beijing are method-acting which allows the concerned foreigners to think that they are being very activist by "defying" Beijing and meeting the Dalai Lama.
The fundamental truth about the Dalai Lama is that, if he isn't a plant by Beijing, he's doing nothing to distinguish himself from one. He is utterly impotent and insignificant. That's the best reason to eschew meeting him. He makes Quisling look like Arminius.
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