To: Moominoid who wrote (8236 ) 8/12/2006 9:42:15 PM From: TobagoJack Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 218908 David, Ron knows all that. He is just trying to put on the best lipstick on a horrid situation. Regarding Tibet, one could say it was a regime change operation performed on a cruel and feudal/slave society, and the subsequent anti-terror operation was made necessary as the loyalists of the old regime, with foreign aid and in concert with foreign machination, tried to recover what was lost, namely power, and re-enslave the population under the domain of fundamentalist religion etc. One could say almost anything one wants to, but, babies are defintely not getting killed by men in armor and daughters are most certainly not getting raped while parents are getting murdered in the next room. I think I got the art of debate down pretty well, as in focus on the issue at hand, do not get distracted, and be ready to go back to the time of Adam & Eve, if necessary. Should Ron edge towards the edge whereby he starts comparing the number of innocents dying under Saddam and under the present circumstance, he is lost.en.wikipedia.org Third-Party views No country has ever publicly accepted Tibet as an independent state [22], in spite of several instances of government officials appealing to their superiors to do so [23]. Treaties signed by Britain and Russia in the early years of the twentieth century [24] and others signed by Nepal and India in the 1950s [25], recognized Tibet's political subordination to China. The Americans presented their view on 15 May 1943: For its part, the Government of the United States has borne in mind the fact that...the Chinese constitution lists Tibet among areas constituting the territory of the Republic of China. This Government has at no time raised a question regarding either of these claims. [26] Not a single sovereign state, including India, has extended recognition to the Tibetan Government-in-exile in the more than two decades of its existence, despite obvious precedents for such an action. This lack of legal recognition of independence has forced even some strong supporters of the refugees to admit that: ...even today international legal experts sympathetic to the Dalai Lama's cause find it difficult to argue that Tibet ever technically established its independence of the Chinese Empire, imperial, or republican. [27] Should the settlement of the non-issue require going back in time to the Tang Dysnasty, I fear the status of the New World might also come under scrutiny and revision ;0) Chugs, J