Update below

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, a long time critic of China’s human rights behavior, stepped up to be the first foreign leader to openly embrace the Dalai Lama since the recent unrest in China, India and Tibet has begun.

Other updates on Saturday are this article in the NY Times by Stolberg and Sengupta, including a brief resume of the Bush’s decision to go to the Olympics and the difficulties forseen if he should change his mind. Steven Spielberg has recently withdrawn as artistic adviser to the Olympics.

Demonstrations in support of Tibet and Tibetans in exile have been taking place around the world, including this one in Paris.

France’s Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner may still be questioning whether French athletes should show up at this summer’s Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing, but a throng of pro-Tibet protesters in Paris on Friday clearly had their own answer. Some 300 people rallied for Tibet at the Trocadéro as tensions with China continued to build, hoisting signs reading “Boycott the Beijing Olympics” and “China Out of Tibet” before marching through heavily trafficked tourist zones near the Eiffel Tower.

Update:

In a nearly unprecedented move,

A group of 30 Chinese intellectuals appealed to the Chinese government on Saturday to admit that its policy of crushing dissent in Tibet and blaming the ensuing violence on the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, was failing.

“The one-sided propaganda of the official Chinese media is having the effect of stirring up inter-ethnic animosity and aggravating an already tense situation,” the group said in an open letter posted on Boxun.com, a Web site for overseas Chinese. It was the first time a Chinese group had publicly urged the country’s leaders to re-think their response to two weeks of deadly protests in Tibetan areas across western China.

Chinese Urge Their Government

Update II:

Ugen, a Tibetan exile, proposes a mild form of protest jujitsu to other Tibetans in exile. China, as many ruling powers before, claims it is not destroying the Tibetan culture, that in fact Tibetan is the primary language of the area. Not so in practice. Letters addresed in Tibetan are not delivered, and infact the postal authorities have an official stamp that says: Write Address in Chinese. So, suggests Ugen, Tibetans abroad should deluge the postal routes with post cards and other missives addressed in Tibetan, forcing China to ban the practice, or to respond by hiring more postal workers fluent in Tibetan.

Open Democracy

[This goes a little way to contradicting Patrick French’s contention — see comments– that Tibet’s freedom agitation is a creature of big western organizations….]