Posted on 10/05/2009 5:53:02 PM PDT by oldskuulconserv
President Barack Obama has broken with presidential precedent and has refused to meet with the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is the chief of the Buddhist faith and is also the acting head of state for Tibet, which China invaded in 1950.
The Dalai Lama is well-seen in many parts of American life and was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Obama is the first President not to meet with the religious leader since 1991.
(Excerpt) Read more at righthandedpitcher.blogspot.com ...
“Hey, how can I meet with the Dalai Lama yet still meet with the Chinese as a supplicant?”
Muslims are very prejudiced against eastern religions...much more-so than they are against jews and christians. Jews and christians are “people of the book” and sons of abraham. Hindus, buddists, et al, are not.
Do Muslims meet with Buddhists? Why hasn’t Obama join a church yet after almost nine months in office? Curious minds want to know.
Obama is a slave, but to the Chinese. They own him.
do we have another link for this article
“...Obama is the first President not to meet with the religious leader since 1991...”
Obama, YOU ARE SCUM!
Bet DUmpers are aflame over this. I’d go look, but I’m in an unusually happy mood and don’t want to ruin it.
No surprise. The Dalai Lama is seen as anti-communist. Obama didn’t want to offend his communist friends. [The Community-Organizer-in-Chief has no pro-freedom friends to offend with his gross conduct.]
In an attempt to gain favor with China, the United States pressured Tibetan representatives to postpone a meeting between the Dalai Lama and President Obama until after Obama's summit with his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, scheduled for next month, according to diplomats, government officials and other sources familiar with the talks.
For the first time since 1991, the Tibetan spiritual leader will visit Washington this week and not meet with the president. Since 1991, he has been here 10 times. Most times the meetings have been "drop-in" visits at the White House. The last time he was here, in 2007, however, George W. Bush became the first sitting president to meet with him publicly, at a ceremony at the Capitol in which he awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress's highest civilian award.
The U.S. decision to postpone the meeting appears to be part of a strategy to improve ties with China that also includes soft-pedaling criticism of China's human rights and financial policies as well as backing efforts to elevate China's position in international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund. Obama administration officials have termed the new policy "strategic reassurance," which entails the U.S. government taking steps to convince China that it is not out to contain the emerging Asian power.
” Considering the relatively small power of the Lama, this sends the signal that Obama is willing to throw overboard leaders who are friendly to the US to appease hostile states.”
Noooo, you mean like when threw Poland and the Czech Republic overboard for Russia?
Israel, look out! Iran needs appeasing!
Probably because the Dalai Lama had nice things to say about President Bush.
China is still gonna turn you out soon enough btch.
WTF are we gonna do with this loser?
“Obama, YOU ARE SCUM!”
You’re too kind!
Obama just wants to finalize the sell-off of America to the Chinese.
I think most of us can agree that this most likely will be the longest 4 years of our lifetimes.
I’m horrified that our president is so obviously weak, and saddened that most Americans don’t see this.
I’d laugh, but the ramifications of his decisions put us all in such peril. I just shake my head.
2010/2012 can’t get here soon enough.
Well . . . Let me say a few words as a Buddhist.
The DL is not “the chief of the Buddhist faith.”
About a dozen years ago the DL, through his “office”, put out what amounted to a “fatwah” against my teacher at the time, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, who was listed as numero uno on a list of ten “People That It Would Be Better For Tibet If They Were Dead”. There was also a Swiss film at that time showing the DL throwing what can only be described as a childish, hatred-filled tantrum about my teacher’s unwillingness to compromise his view of the Buddhist canon for political expediency. I volunteered for my teacher’s security detail for a while, and the threat was considered very serious.
If I understand my history correctly, the following tidbits are true:
The monasteries in Tibet supported standing armies for most of their histories.
Westerners who happened to wander or travel into Tibet were summarily executed before WWI.
The monastery system, under the DL and PL, presented an all-powerful theocracy: the people were fleeced routinely and treated like serfs or slaves to support the monastic orders, and it was required to send the second son from each family to become monks. It is a myth that the Tibetan people were uniformly upset to see this theocracy demolished.
I must say further that during the time I spent there on pilgrimage in 1990, I found the Tibetan people to be the most ignoble I have ever met. I went there with the usual Westerner’s romanticism of these people, and was rudely awakened. I found in my dealings with the Chinese, then and since then, that they were the polar opposites of the Tibetans when it came to honesty and basic human decency.
While I admire the very profound and vast teachings that came to the world through Tibet, they never seem to have put them into practice in a meaningful way in the rule of their own country, IMO. A pity.
I hear-by challenge EVERY FREEPER who has not made a donation to Free Republic to make a donation of just $10 and see what happens to the Freep-A-Thon!
I would think that every Freeper could donate at least $10 to help keep FR up and running! :)
And he picks the commies again!
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