Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

The Mutant Palm reveals the free Tibet movement for what they are: a bunch of self-congratulatory pranksters that are unable to engage the Chinese people on the subject of an independent Tibet.

KATHMANDU, April 25, 2007—Chinese authorities have detained four U.S. citizens who staged a protest at the Chinese Everest base camp against Beijing's plans to bring the Olympic torch through the region.

On arriving at the base camp, the activists from the U.S.-based Students for a Free Tibet group unfurled a banner which read "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008," Kirsten Westby from Boulder, Colorado told RFA's Tibetan service by telephone from a holding cell.

If ever an argument needed to be made for watching less TV, then the groups of Western Free Tibet protesters that have snuck in to China are it.

Freedom-house, "an independent non-governmental organization that supports the expansion of freedom in the world", has issued its annual report this week called "Freedom of the World" detailing ranking for freedom in countries around the world. The article gives a summary ranking on Asian countries.

While the Dalai Lama is yelling at China accusing it for repressing religious freedom in Tibet, he himself is being sued in India for heavy-handedly persecuting followers of a deity of Tibetan Buddhism deemed by the Dalai Lama as "non-spiritual" allegedly out of political necessity. As such, the Dalai Lama is accused of being more like a "totalitarian dictator", rather than a reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion that he proclaims himself as.

Over a thousand Chinese activists, lawyers and scholars have written an open letter to President Hu Jintao to ask for the release of political prisoners and for greater media freedoms.

In other news, Greenland's petitioning for the Summer Olympics.... right.

BEIJING (AFP) — Chinese police roughed up a British TV crew and stopped them covering a pro-Tibet protest, witnesses said, in the latest case of interference with media freedom at the Beijing Olympic Games.

There is something unique about Tibet. Whether it is its culture, potential mineral resources, political movement, religion, its recent riot that rocked the world, tourism, Dalai Lama or maybe just its luxurious railway, Tibet always grabs the headline in one news or another.

When Public Enemy, the militant rap group, came to Beijing this weekend they were not censored at all. In seems The Rolling Stones are a bigger threat to authoritarian rule than lyrics like "Our freedom of speech is freedom or death; we got to fight the powers that be."