Picked up a Wall Street Journal this weekend and noticed their coverage of Tibet was quite thorough. Here’s a link to some of it. The Western media seems to be coming around more to describing the Tibet protests as riots where innocent Hans and Tibetans were injured or killed. But if China wonders why it is getting such bad press and such close attention to its internal affairs, it’s the Olympics, dummy.

Digital Dharma (by way of Danny Fisher) has a report by Burma’s government in exile on the 2007 Saffron Revolution.

Does meditation make you more compassionate? Or does being compassionate make you meditate more?

MSNBC: Neuroscience may explain the Dalai Lama:

Many wonder how the Dalai Lama can retain his kindness and magnanimity, even as his homeland is torn apart by violence. New neuroscience research may help explain the exiled Tibetan leader’s unremitting compassion for all people.

And China is complaining about biased news coverage? Please.

Continuing its PR campaign, China says it will compensate civilian victims of the Tibetan violence. Some have charged China is inciting race hatred by indicting the Tibetans all across the media. Things really are creeping closer to 1936.

After the blogs attack, CNN has to clarify how it is covering the Tibet crisis. Doubtless most of the Western media has a slightly starry-eyed view of the Dalai Lama and Tibet, and furthermore a prejudice against communist China. The Dalai Lama is not perfect, and Tibet was no paradise before the 1950s. But the world is justified in having questions for China to answer, and when Chinese police are on the street alongside Tibetan civilians, it is not unusual the civilians should get the benefit of the doubt.

Will democracy actually come to Burma in 2010? Place your bets.

26 said to be killed in the incredibly lethal civil war in Sri Lanka.

They’ve recounted the votes in Bhutan and the royalist party actually won 45 of the 47 seats, not 44. But a reader of the the Guardian says Bhutan’s democracy is real.