The Joke

From the rambammed international editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Hartcher:

"The leader of Tibet's government-in-exile has been telling his story about Bob Carr around the world for years and always gets a laugh. Last week he recounted it during a visit to Parliament House in Canberra... In 2013 [Lobsang] Sangay visited Canberra and a reporter asked him whether Carr, Australia's then foreign affairs minister, would be meeting him. A government that meets the Dalai Lama or Sangay risks the wrath of the Chinese Communist Party, which has claimed to be the sole representative of the Tibetan people since its army invaded Tibet in 1950. 'I said I'd love to, but I haven't asked for a meeting, not wanting to put Carr in a difficult position', he recalled last week. 'I'm sure that, given the choice, Bob Carr would like to meet because that's the Buddhist culture - we like to believe people are good.' Later in his visit, the Tibetan leader was in the lift from Parliament's car park when it stopped. 'The doors open and Bob Carr walks in,' he tells me. The Labor backbencher Michael Danby, Sangay's escort for the visit, introduced the two men in the lift: 'I had to decide at that moment whether to extend my hand or not. The Tibetan way is not to cause inconvenience, so I nodded and smiled. He kind of nodded - a little bit - then walked past. I like to say that we didn't have a formal meeting but we had a karmic meeting. No matter how powerful the Chinese government may be, it can't prevent the foreign minister of Australia from meeting me'." (Tide is turning on Tibet, 11/12/18)

Hartcher goes on in his opinion piece to describe Carr as "now a cheerleader for the Beijing government as head of the Australia-China Relations Institute."

Actually, the joke here is on Sangay.

Here we have a man who is apparently so immersed in what he calls "Buddhist culture" - "we like to believe people are good" - that, on the face of it, he is blissfully unaware that his "escort" is Australia's most vocal Zionist cheerleader for Israeli apartheid - which can only mean that he's either a complete fool or he's being disingenuous.