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Tensyn Gyatso a.k.a the 14th Dalai Lama announced that he was negotiating with Chinese officials to discuss a pilgrimage to Tibet. The statement comes against the backdrop of increased US support of subversive elements in Hong Kong and China’s Xinjiang province. The Dalai Lama has been internationally criticized by Buddhists for supporting an armed insurgency. He is still considered as an outcast by the majority of Buddhists worldwide, for conducting politics, and for the violent oppression of “heretics” among Tibetan Buddhists while he is dressing in a monk’s robes.

The Dalai Lama is, according to Tibetan Buddhism’s Mahayana school the incarnation and the embodiment of Chenzerig or Avalokitesvaha as he would be called in Sanskrit. Avalokitesvaha, has, according to Buddhist belief, a thousand eyes to see the suffering of the world; he has a thousand ears to hear the suffering of the world; and he has a thousand arms to alleviate all of that suffering out of pure compassion. Compare that to CIA weapons drops and the murder of Buddhist monks and ask how likely it is that Mr Gyatso is one of those vicars which have been sent.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's Tibetan program was a covert operation consisting of political plots, propaganda distribution, as well as paramilitary support and intelligence gathering based on U.S. commitments made to the Dalai Lama in 1951 and 1956.[1] Although the operation was formally assigned to the CIA alone, it was nevertheless closely coordinated with several other U.S. government agencies such as the Department of State and the Department of Defense.[2] Previous operations had aimed to strengthen a number of isolated Tibetan resistance groups, which eventually led to the creation of a paramilitary force on the Nepalese border with approximately 2,000 men. By February 1964, the projected annual cost for all CIA Tibetan operations had exceeded US$1.7 million.[2] The program was gradually discontinued in the late 1960s, and finally ended with President Nixon's visit to China in 1972.[3]

As the Obama administration campaign to stop the commercialization of strong encryption heats up, National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden is firing back on behalf of the companies like Apple and Google that are finding themselves under attack. “Technologists and companies working to protect ordinary citizens should be applauded, not sued or prosecuted,” Snowden wrote in an email through his lawyer. Snowden was asked by The Intercept to respond to the contentious suggestion — made Thursday on a blog that frequently promotes the interests of the national security establishment — that companies like Apple and Google might in certain cases be found legally liable for providing material aid to a terrorist organization because they provide encryption services to their users.

In his email, Snowden explained how law enforcement officials who are demanding that U.S. companies build some sort of window into unbreakable end-to-end encryption — he calls that an “insecurity mandate” — haven’t thought things through. “The central problem with insecurity mandates has never been addressed by its proponents: if one government can demand access to private communications, all governments can,” Snowden wrote. “No matter how good the reason, if the U.S. sets the precedent that Apple has to compromise the security of a customer in response to a piece of government paper, what can they do when the government is China and the customer is the Dalai Lama?”

Weakened encryption would only drive people away from the American technology industry, Snowden wrote. “Putting the most important driver of our economy in a position where they have to deal with the devil or lose access to international markets is public policy that makes us less competitive and less safe.”