Tricycle | Awake in the World

Great piece about some guys on a mission to meet the Dalai Lama.

A blogger in San Diego reports on the fires there.

BURMA: Normalcy / Normality in Burma from the Penguin Blog. Plus, the Burmese regime agrees to an earlier visit by U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari. Australia imposes new sanctions on Myanmar. Is the willingness of the junta to deal more openly with the U.N. cause for optimism?

TIBET: China is furious that the world is honoring its bete noire, the Dalai Lama. (He's set to visit Canada soon, after visiting DC to much acclaim.) So who can Big Red take it out on but the Tibetans still within its borders? So here they are using the army to seal off (and attack?) a monastery that celebrated the DL's Congressional award. Will China ever invade India? In your dreams, this article says. And here's a site for the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, aka stateless people. They have some good articles sticking it to China for bullying the Tibetan people because the Party was humiliated by the world's sustained applause for the DL. China and the West need each other economically, but they can still spar in ways like this that don't seem symbolic if you live in Tibet.

Oh yeah. and get ready for the New Space Race between China and India. China just launched its first lunar probe.

- Philip Ryan, Web Editor