hey, chinese dudes, its ok to have a totalitarian regime running your govt. thats part of nationalism in definition. check it out though: "western" style govts are based around the idea of freedom. It has long been thought that where there is economic freedom, political freedom will follow, and vise versa. now, If you want tibet so bad, who really knows why anyway? then you will have to accept the fact that you ARE limiting, FORCEFULLY, the WILL of another PEOPLE.

you called them secessionists, in america we would call them patriots. but thats only because its popular to support the Tibetian monks. the hegemony against China and in fact the hegemony against totalitarian control in general is unfair, but necessary to ensure the survival of the idea of freedom. China supprorts policies that may contribute, potentially, to the destruction of human life, that arguably does you(china) no harm.

It is important to truely understand the right and wrong of your government.

To Zhao,
Actually I have never denied that the presidency in China was elected by a very few in the CCP. I claimed previously that it was the National Assembly was the assembly responsible, perhaps I was wrong in that aspect. I should have been more precise and said not elected by general elections.
I don't find the US to be the paradigm of democracy. The English parliamentary system is my definition of the perfect check and balance with its supreme courts ruling and accountability with its Parliamentary supremacy. It is also the basis of American democracy in many aspect -- and the democracy of most nations world wide, if not all.
Either ways, this goes deeper than the frequency and the number of parties (which there are more than two of in the Parliamentary system). There's the issue of centralization, of general consensus, and of accountability. All extremely important in determining the level of people's involvement in politics.

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haha, this sentence shows it all LOL. pointless to talk with someone that calls a photo of real persons one of wax figures LOL.

damn this German website www.iivs.de - Startseite has such a pic, dont they know its MERELY a wax show??

The only thing this shows is your ignorance stemming from this seemingly pointless picture showing game.

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Oh is that the Dalai Lama? ZZZOMG!!!!! I don't give a shit.

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Personal freedom is a lofty thing which is often sadly abused. Take the event that happened in Tibet. Do all Tibetans want independence or just someone who are close to Dalai Lama? When the slaver owners of the South want to expand their territory within the union, did all people in the South want to break up from the union? Self-determination of the South is a sham slogan that serves the interest of the slaver owners who were actually minorities of the South. I will not hesitate to support a province of China to declare their independence if the people, that is the working people set up their government and carry out their struggle against injustice to the end. But I will not give the so-called Tibet government in exile a darn in their ludicruous cry for a "free Tibet". This sets many Chinese and other freedom-loving people apart from those hypocrites from the west.

We'll never know until freedom of speech has been established along with decentralized elections.

Again, nothing more than speculations without a democratic system to convey data on this.

Libertarians of the Austrian School have often taken the side of Southern separatists, not because they advocate slavery, or anything in these lines, but because of the principles behind the right to secession. Plus, many joined the South because Abraham Lincoln was a horrible president in matters of democracy.

The working people? What is that suppose to mean? Anyone deemed independent for his individual life ought to have the same amount of say in the process of policy making and law in the jurisdiction immediately affecting them.
I don't know what you meant by "struggle against injustice to the end."
You say you support the people's decision, yet you oppose the cause for an independent or more autonomous Tibet without knowing the decision of the people, since there has yet to be elections on the matter. If anything, that is hypocrite, not some contingent action of a contingent group known as the "west".

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smallpox, you're points are valid. That does not mean that the people of the South all wanted to cede from the union. Obviously, the free peasants and the slaves had a serious interest clash with those slave owners who were the active champion of the breakup. The clash was real. The free peasants want the land for themselves, esp. the new land. The slave owners wanted otherwise, i.e. to expand their plantations further to the new land. Then, was it meaningful to have a popular vote to determine the fate of the southern states? No way. People will fight to their death. Slaver owners' freedom to their property means the enslavement of the slaves. In fact, the Southern slave owners had not once trampled on popular votes and brought troops to enforce their will upon some states. If slave owners allowed to separate, will their slaves be allowed to separate from the South? If a Southerner happen to be with the union, can be declare independence from the South? You have not grappled with the significance of an act of ceding from the union. And you are looking at a history from an attorney's standpoint. When you have a minority who had all the means of propaganda, who were politically much more organized and experienced than others, who were more educated and enjoyed themselves more in public administration since they did not need to sweat to make a lliving, what do you expect the outcome of so-called freedom of speech? NO, here I do not object the freedom of speech. I just want to remind everybody that the loudest voice does not represent the voice of the people automatically. Dalai Lama can not represent Tibetans. You and I can not, commies can not. The decision lies with the Tibetans. The vast majority of them and other ethnic groups living in Tibet. You seems to say autonomy or independence is good for them, where did you get that impression?

I am for personal freedom. Freedom means self-reliance and not be controlled by others. When someone owns you, as the ex-slave owners of Tibet's serfs, you are not a free person. And the freedom of speech is really pointless to you. If you're free and without a job, you are free and free to be starved. Freedom of speech is really not the first priority to you.

You can't say any of this. In the words of Frederick Douglass, an ex slave in a southern plantation that educated himself and became one of the head for the emancipation cause realised that slaves had no idea what the alternative to slavery was. I'm not advocating slavery in any way, but most blacks after emancipation either came back to their "lords" to become wage workers or went to live in cities. I have heard very little for a cause of emancipated Americans calling for owning their own land in the lines of those emancipated in Russia or China.

Why would elections not be significant?
People don't fight to the death when they have elections.
Further the right to own property in this case is overruled by the right to human dignity and life.

Considering the slaves accounted for the majority of the population, an entirely democratic system would have called for the removal of things such as the Jim Crow laws, and others; but slaves were only 3/5 of a man for election purposes. So there was nothing democratic in the process of secession. Further, considering the decentralization of the American system, secession is a much weaker issue. Even though the South could separate into a different nation, it still had the autonomy to pass discriminating laws (again, the Jim Crow laws).

But in a fair democratic elections, each vote is equally strong.
Freedom of speech is not reliant on propaganda. It's reliant on the opinions of the majority. Fox can throw at me all its propaganda at me, I am not affected by it what's so ever, subsequently I believed they realised this long ago and their theme of super action news and rhetorics have toned down. Anti-WTO protests are opposed by the powerful, yet they receive much attention.

Let them have elections, and let them decide. Where did you get the impression that the Dalai Lama can not represent Tibetans and say that they ought to chose when they have not made the decision? Is this one of those -- you're free to chose whatever you like, as long as you make the "right" decision? Autonomy and independence is good for everyone as it entails decentralization.

Freedom of speech does not suggest the lost of economic opportunities, if that was what you were suggesting. There's no such thing as self-reliance. We're all interdependent. I'm not a slave because I depend on my job for an income. I'm as dependent on my job as my boss is dependent on me for his income.
Freedom of speech serves as a voice to everyone. Whether or not these voices become mainstream is a different story, but hte fact that they're there is justice enough to have some facts (yet we have none from China because of the lack of freedoms).

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