The mask of the Dalai Lama falls.

He's appealing to the Tibetan people to stop their protests and violence, he asks to keep good relations with China and claims that indepence is out of the question.

But he also admits that the situation is beyond his control and has threatened to resign if the protests continue.

Read more at Al Jazeera: Dalai Lama threatens to resign. (Curious: I didn't read this at BBC).

He's playing the Chinese card against his own people, against their hopes of sovereignity, dignity and freedom. In a sense it's probably good because the Tibetan people cannot remain subject to the feudal lamaist aristocracy. On the other side it could be demoralizing.

The Tibetan revolt has extended beyond the autonomous region into other provinces of Tibetan majority. As you may know Tibetans extend by much of the Southwest of the People's Republic of China, well beyond the borders of autonomous Tibet:

I wonder if this nationalist revolt could spark the eventually unavoidable burgueoise "revolution" in all China. Maybe not yet... but as the global economic crisis deepens and as the contradictions of totalitarianism and corruption become more patent, China will have no choice but to change: you can't be burgueoise under the red banner forever.

Kosovo revolts also disintegrated Yugoslavia. Nothing remains, change happens.