{"id":843,"date":"2009-10-05T10:19:55","date_gmt":"2009-10-05T10:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/10\/obama-postpones-avoids-meeting-with-dalai-lama-change-we-no-longer-believe-in.html"},"modified":"2009-10-05T10:19:55","modified_gmt":"2009-10-05T10:19:55","slug":"obama-postpones-avoids-meeting-with-dalai-lama-change-we-no-longer-believe-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/10\/obama-postpones-avoids-meeting-with-dalai-lama-change-we-no-longer-believe-in.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama Postpones (Avoids?) Meeting With Dalai Lama: Change We No Longer Believe In?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dalai-lama-obama.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>by Ethan Nichtern<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

According to the Washington Post<\/a>, President Obama<\/a> has postponed meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama <\/a>until after a summit with Chinese<\/a> Leader Hu Jintao<\/a>. The Post claims this is an attempt to avoid ruffling feathers and to strengthen ties with the Chinese. Of course, I understand the move diplomatically. Pride and appearances are huge in diplomatic relations, especially with the Chinese. But what about standing up for truth, fairness, justice, interdependence?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, perhaps the coolest (and oldest?) reporter in America, Helen Thomas<\/a>, gave press secretary Robert Gibbs an earful about the Obama administration’s failure to forcefully and unequivocally stand tall and supporting the public option on health care reform<\/a> (it’s a great video clip to watch). <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\nLeadership is about diplomacy, and listening to opposing perspectives,
\nfor sure. No one interested in mindfulness and interdependence would
\ndispute that. However, those qualities come into play after<\/i> you
\nstand tall for values – values like fairness, justice, compassion, and
\ninterdependence. If you don’t stand tall and firm –uncompromising– on
\nthose values, you have no real strength when it comes time to
\nnegotiate, or to listen to opposition voices. Relatedly, on the issue of bipartisanship, I
\noften ask myself this question these days: “What’s the point of working
\non issues of representative government with the current Republican
\nminority, when that group keeps clearly and loudly stating that it dislikes the very idea of representative government<\/a>?”<\/p>\n

Has Obama lost your support at all? Did he have it to begin with? Just wondering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ethan Nichtern According to the Washington Post, President Obama has postponed meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama until after a summit with Chinese Leader Hu Jintao. The Post claims this is an attempt to avoid ruffling feathers and to strengthen ties with the Chinese. Of course, I understand the move diplomatically. Pride and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism","category-interdependent-activism-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nObama Postpones (Avoids?) 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His writing has been featured in numerous print and online publications. He is the founding director of the Interdependence Project and the host of the I.D. Project\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s popular weekly podcast (available on iTunes). He is currently on the part-time faculty of Eugene Lang College at New School University in NYC, where he teaches Buddhism. Ethan lectures regularly at universities and venues around the country on Buddhism, meditation, contemporary culture, and activism.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/enichtern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}