HELIOLITH

I stumbled on this while reading last Thursday’s headlines from the Deutsche-Welle “Langsam Gesprochene Nachrichten” The article mentioned that, “Eine Sprecherin bezeichnete den Akt als eklatante Einmischung in die inneren Angelegenheiten des Landes.” or that, “a spokeswoman signaled that the act was blatant meddling in the internal affairs of their country.” Pretty pathetic how seriously people take themselves in that they think that they have a right to keep their violence private. The main irony here of course, is the surreal degree of irony in who is giving whom this peace prize.

Our president, with a history of choosing war over peace, a disregard and contempt for human rights, and a war-mongering attitude that has led to untold and unmeasurable suffering has bestowed a moral award to someone whose record is, to say the least far more pure. Buddhists and peace-loving people the world around, including most likely the Dalai Lama himself, are laughing with the cosmic and tragic irony of this gesture. I hope only that somehow magically the encounter will have broken our president’s deep sleep of wanton ignorance and destruction. Max Davies at the Advance Titan analyzes some more of the ironies in what the Dalai Lama stands for, and how far Bush has managed to diverge from that in his own path.