News of the Day (March 25)

Death toll in Tibet passes 100: The Tibetan government in exile has put the number killed by the Communists at roughly 140 (CNN). The cadres, meanwhile, are insisting its less than 20, and actually claiming most were "ethnic Han Chinese targeted by rampaging Tibetans" (same link) - Stephen Gregory, of the Epoch Times, put that nonsense to rest. The cadres also went after Western media (BBC) and Speaker Pelosi (One Free Korea).

Then again, do the Communists really have a choice? As Liu Binyan noted (h/t Jennifer Chou at the Weekly Standard Blog): "Nationalism and Han chauvinism are now the only effective instruments in the ideological arsenal of the Chinese Communist Party." Meanwhile, Tibetans in India talk about their predicament to the Washington Post, and Dennis Prager wonders why Tibet doesn't get nearly as much attention as Palestine (World Net Daily).

Steve Janke calls for an Olympic Boycott: I particularly liked the biting pun he used- "Now is the time to strike and strike hard" (emphasis added).

More on Communist Olympiad: Anne Applebaum scores Enlightened Comment of the Day honors with a concise, point-by-point, and wonderfully written takedown of the nonsensical arguments in favor of the Beijing Games:

No one involved in the preparations for this year's Olympics really believes that this is "only about the athletes," or that the Beijing Games will be an innocent display of sporting prowess, or that they bear no relation to Chinese politics. I don't see why the rest of us should believe those things, either.

Meanwhile, Yang Chunlin, who "dared to claim that human rights were more important than the Olympic games" (Boycott 2008), was sent to prison for five years. Jaime FlorCruz (CNN) examines the cadres larger exposure problems as the Games near.

Cadres lift block on BBC English, but "the firewall remains in place for Chinese language services on the website and for any links in Chinese" - which tells me this move was more for foreign consumption.

Communist spy sentenced to 24+ years in prison: Chi Mak, the Communist spy busted two years ago, will spend more than two dozen years in jail for "conspiring to export sensitive US defence technology to China" (BBC). Federal District Court Judge Cormac Carney explained his decision thusly (Bill Gertz - Washington Times): "A high-end . . . sentence will provide a strong deterrent to the [People's Republic of China] not to send its agents here to steal American military secrets." Nice to see somone is trying to send Beijing a message.

On the Taiwanese President-elect: Don Feder is quite sanguine about Ma Ying-jeou (Washington Times), while the Washington Post editors believe it is Hu Jintao who is now on the hot seat (I hope they're right; I fear they're wrong).

News on "another Chinese province" (Stalinist North Korea): One Free Korea has two examples of the continuing decay of the Kim Jong-il regime - one symbolic (the apparent end of annual Kim Il-sung celebrations), the other very, very real (reports of food protests).