One dog starts them all barking.

(From iht.com): Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, published commentary Sunday accusing Pelosi of ignoring the violence caused by the Tibetan rioters.

" 'Human rights police' like Pelosi are habitually bad tempered and ungenerous when it comes to China, refusing to check their facts and find out the truth of the case," it said.

Surely even such a misinformed "news" service as Xinhua must have heard rumours that Tibet has been closed to outsiders, rendering it impossible for Ms Pelosi to check into a hotel let alone the facts. But while she is in Dharamsala she could help the Chinese leaders by sniffing around to see if they really have jackals in monk's robes, and how this unlikely disguise helps them steal chickens.

The Chinese themselves have a saying which goes "若要人不知，除非己莫为" (ruò yào rén bù zhī，chú fēi jǐ mò wéi) which boils down to saying: "if you don’t want others to know about it, don’t do it." So all we can do is assume that if they got something to hide, they must be doing it.

Unfortunately, a century of turmoil has turned China, once thought of as the cradle of "Oriental philosophy" and birthplace of wise sayings and homely advice such as the above, into a place where anger is held in respect. A place where it is considered statesmanlike for leaders to indulge in paranoid rants and name-calling. And where it is de rigueur for everyone else to follow suit. The Chinese have another older expression which could describe a modern propaganda campaign: "吠形吠声" (fèixíng-fèishēng) meaning: when one dog barks at a shadow all the others join in.

So it's refreshing to read in the same article that: A group of prominent Chinese intellectuals has circulated a petition urging the government to stop what it has called a "one-sided" propaganda campaign and initiate direct dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

Let's see where that gets them.

Some of you might want to check out this guy's website http://www.throughanexilelens.org