Brit Intel confirms Chinese military posed as monks.

[Invictus ChiKen]

Link

LONDON—Britain's GCHQ, the government communications agency that electronically monitors half the world from space, has confirmed the claim by the Dalai Lama that agents of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the PLA, posing as monks, triggered the riots that have left hundreds of Tibetans dead or injured.

GCHQ analysts believe the decision was deliberately calculated by the Beijing leadership to provide an excuse to stamp out the simmering unrest in the region, which is already attracting unwelcome world attention in the run-up to the Olympic Games this summer.

For weeks there has been growing resentment in Lhasa, Tibet's capital, against minor actions taken by the Chinese authorities.

Increasingly, monks have led acts of civil disobedience, demanding the right to perform traditional incense burning rituals. With their demands go cries for the return of the Dalai Lama, the 14th to hold the high spiritual office.

Committed to teaching the tenets of his moral authority—peace and compassion—the Dalai Lama was 14 when the PLA invaded Tibet in 1950 and he was forced to flee to India from where he has run a relentless campaign against the harshness of Chinese rule.

He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

But critics have objected to his attraction to film stars. Newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch has called him: "A very political monk in Gucci shoes."

Discovering that his supporters inside Tibet and China would become even more active in the months approaching the Olympic Games this summer, British intelligence officers in Beijing learned the ruling regime would seek an excuse to move and crush the present unrest.

For full coverage please see Repression in Tibet

That fear was publicly expressed by the Dalai Lama. GCHQ's satellites, geo-positioned in space, were tasked to closely monitor the situation.

The doughnut-shaped complex, near Cheltenham racecourse, is set in the pleasant Cotswolds in the west of England. Seven thousand employees include the best electronic experts and analysts in the world. Between them they speak more than 150 languages. At their disposal are 10,000 computers, many of which have been specially built for their work.

The images they downloaded from the satellites provided confirmation the Chinese used agent provocateurs to start riots, which gave the PLA the excuse to move on Lhasa to kill and wound over the past week.

What the Beijing regime had not expected was how the riots would spread, not only across Tibet, but also to Sichuan, Quighai and Gansu provinces, turning a large area of western China into a battle zone.

The Dalai Lama has called it "cultural genocide" and has offered to resign as head of the protests against Chinese rule in order to bring peace. The current unrest began on March 10, marking the anniversary of the 1959 Uprising against Chinese rule.

However, his followers are not listening to his "message of compassion." Many of them are young, unemployed and dispossessed and reject his philosophy of non-violence, believing the only hope for change is the radical action they are now carrying out.

For Beijing, the urgent need to find a solution to the uprising is one of growing embarrassment. In two weeks time, the national celebrations for the Olympic Games start with the traditional torch relay. The torch bearers are scheduled to pass through Tibet. But the torch could find itself being carried by runners past burning buildings and temples.

A sign of this urgency is that the Chinese prime minister has now said he is prepared to hold talks with the Dalai Lama. Just before this announcement, Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared he would meet the Dalai Lama, who is to visit London next month. This is the first time either leader has proposed to meet the Dalai Lama.

Gordon Thomas is the author of the newly published Secrets & Lies: A History of CIA Mind Control and Germ Warfare (Octavo Editions, USA) and the forthcoming Inside British Intelligence (JR Books, UK).

And from a Buddhist blog with an interesting picture

[Pelranius]

I believe that the pic shown is one of PAP personnel acting as extras for a Michelle Yeoh film.

In fact, if one looks carefully those uniforms are a few years out of date.

[MKSheppard]

WHY would the Chinese want to cause all this unrest BEFORE the olympics, huh?

[Zixinus]

What I don't get is why would the Chinise cause any unrest at all? What do they gain from it?

[Admiral Valdemar]

What I don't get is why would the Chinise cause any unrest at all? What do they gain from it?

No idea. They want to deal with the Tibetan insurgents. Okay. How, exactly, does stirring this hornets nest up before a hugely beneficial economic event achieve anything but bad things?

[Darth Wong]

What I don't get is why would the Chinise cause any unrest at all? What do they gain from it?

I think the accusation is that the unrest was happening anyway, so the Chinese decided to make sure it would be violent unrest, by sending in their secret ninja forces. Hence, giving them an excuse to crack down more violently on the protesters.

Still seems pretty far-fetched though; from the news stories I saw, the violence was mostly perpetrated by young men, who generally don't need much encouragement to do that sort of thing when they're in a large group. Even if the accusation is true, it wouldn't have gone anywhere without decades of ethnic and religious separatist propaganda to back it up.

[LadyTevar]

For nearly 20 years, Beijing's response to unrest has been to go in with overwhelming force and root it out. With this much global attention on them, Beijing did not want an unstable province blowing up in their faces while in the middle of the Olympics, when they would not be able to strike back with the force they prefer. Having that province go up in riots beforehand would give Beijing time to put it down, give it a couple weeks for the news-worthiness to die down globally, and the Olympics can go on without Beijing having something embarrassing happen during it.

I can fully believe Beijing did not expect the riots to spread. As America herself found out during the 1960s, civil unrest spreads like wildfire if there is enough simmering resentment to fuel it. China's turbulent history of peasant revolts should have taught Beijing this by now.

[Invictus ChiKen]

I checked into the picture that one was a mistake. A Buddhist site put it up stating this is how he pictured it going but it wasn't what really happened.

http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org The author seems to have taken the picture down as people where thinking it was suppose to be a 'real' image.


That said the Brit Intel story seems solid.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

This is lunatic; it makes no sense whatsoever, and British "intelligence" pulls theories out of the cracker barrel (i.e., blaming Putin for the radioactive poisoning incident) that we may be dubious..

[Crazy_Vasey]

Do we have any other sources for this? I doubt British intelligence announcing something along these lines would only be covered by a single news source.

[Zixinus]

What I find weird is that British Intelligence is so forthcoming about giving information. Aren't their only concern is to supply information to their state?

[TheKwas]

EpochTimes is notoriously controlled by the Falung Gong 'religion' and should never, ever, be considered a viable news source on anything Chinese related (or simply anything in general). In every addition, they print 'The 9 commentaries' in an open effort to get Chinese Communist members to quit their party and claim that they alone have caused over 30 million people to quit the party based on simply silly data collecting (send them a letter, and you're now an ex-communist party member). Journalist rigor is thrown completely out the door.

A quick google-search of 'GCHQ + Tibet' & 'Britan + Tibet + space' brings up no other independent sources picking up the story other than EpochMedia, which leads me to the conclusion that EpochMedia is simply sprouting half-truths and exaggerations.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Generally, it's not in the interest of the intel. services to release such things, especially when Whitehall is trying to keep a low profile given the big furore over the Olympics and the UK's involvement.

The BBC would release this first too. They have monitoring stations that access all digital and analogue data streams around in conjunction with GCHQ. If one of them picked up such information and it was deemed true and worth printing, then the Beeb would get it with Parliamentary approval from the JIC.

[HemlockGrey]

They already did this in the 80's, didn't they?

[Nephtys]

EpochTimes is notoriously controlled by the Falung Gong 'religion' and should never, ever, be considered a viable news source on anything Chinese related (or simply anything in general). In every addition, they print 'The 9 commentaries' in an open effort to get Chinese Communist members to quit their party and claim that they alone have caused over 30 million people to quit the party based on simply silly data collecting (send them a letter, and you're now an ex-communist party member). Journalist rigor is thrown completely out the door.

A quick google-search of 'GCHQ + Tibet' & 'Britan + Tibet + space' brings up no other independent sources picking up the story other than EpochMedia, which leads me to the conclusion that EpochMedia is simply sprouting half-truths and exaggerations.

This is a false story, from the source alone. Epoch Times makes Fox News look like the gospel truth. A few weeks ago, someone told me they ran an article about chinese 'death camps' with 'ovens' and 'soap factories'. You'd think those would be visible from space.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Let's all put on our conspiracy hats, people. How do we model this after a 9/11 Truther's line of thinking? Got it: the Dalai Lama is a PRC mole!

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Among all the Buddhist sects, I can see why Beijing would want to outlaw the Falungong. Weird dodgy philosophy, nonsensical glorification of their leader, even going so far as portray him with a Buddhist hallow, seriously, what's there to believe about them, aside from stupid hippies who support human rights with a religiosity that sickens anyone with brains to the core.

[TheKwas]

Falun Gong has no association with Buddhism.

[Zixinus]

A quick google-search of 'GCHQ + Tibet' & 'Britan + Tibet + space' brings up no other independent sources picking up the story other than EpochMedia, which leads me to the conclusion that EpochMedia is simply sprouting half-truths and exaggerations.

Which makes sense when you re-read the article and consider that the idea is mainly based on intel from satellite photos, released by British Intelligence for no apparent reason.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Falun Gong has no association with Buddhism.

Yeah right. It might not have direct association, but it draws a lot of philosophy and what not from it.

Or are you going to wave off the picture of Li Hongzhi portrayed as Buddha?

[TheKwas]

Li Hangzhi infact claims to be a reincarnation of the Buddha (hence explaining whatever picture you may be talking about) and claims to have studied under great Dao and Buddhist masters, but in terms of actual content I can't think of anything in Falun Gong that is drawn from Buddhism other than a general notion of 'cultivation of self', but that's a pretty universal religious theme. I suspect it's more or less an attempt to associate Falun Gong with already established and respected religions. Calling Falun Gong a Buddhist sect is pretty off the mark no matter how vaguely you define Buddhism. You would be better off caling Islam a Christian sect.