Tibetans and their supporters around the world held vigils this week in support of the ongoing uprising in Tibet, as Chinese military and police jailed protesters inside Tibet, and reports of injuries and deaths continue.

Today on Boing Boing tv: Xeni visited one such vigil in front of the LA Federal building, organized by Southern California Tibetans, including Namgyal Kyulo of the Tibetan Association of Southern California, and Tseten Phanucharas, of the Los Angeles Friends of Tibet.

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Some of the vigil participants reported they were unable to connect with family and friends at home in Tibet, to check on their well-being, because of blocked telecommunications. Others (an exiled grandmother and her 11-year-old son, alike) spoke of being "glued to YouTube," straining to watch blurry phonecam videos of the demonstrations and violence.

China's government is not allowing reporters or human rights observers inside Tibet, and human rights advocates are concerned that grave violations are taking place.

(Image: some of the hundreds of ethnic Tibetans identified as protest participants and turned in to Chinese police in Tibet. The detainees were presented before state-run television cameras before being transported to prison / XZTV, Tibet).

"The Chinese government must immediately allow independent media access to all areas of Tibet," said the Tibetan Association's Kyulo. "We continue to hear eyewitness reports of house to house searches and arbitrary arrests in Lhasa and growing numbers of killings in Amdo, Kham, and other areas."

China blocked YouTube and Google News, and Boing Boing tv viewers inside China tell us that Boing Boing is also blocked (perhaps due to keyword filtering for words like "Dalai Lama," or "Tibet.") Google appears to be complying with China's net-censors by censoring the version of Google News that is available inside China.

"Without the internet, we would have no information at all about what's going on inside of Tibet," said Tseten Phanucharas. "nor would this global movement in solidarity with the Tibetan people exist."

Also present at the rally was Gyalthan Gyatso, part of a team of cyclists doing a "Peace Ride for Human Rights in Tibet" beginning March 29th in San Francisco.

(Image: some iphone snapshots during the BBtv shoot / Xeni Jardin)

Previously on Boing Boing:

Tibet: nearly 1,000 jailed in Lhasa, Dalai Lama offers to resign

Xeni on G4's AOTS re: Tibet and China's 'net blackout

Tibet: China blocks YouTube, protests spread, bloggers react

Tibet: more deaths, injuries in Lhasa as crackdown grows

Tibetan protests in Lhasa turn violent as Chinese forces crack down

China sends in troops to quell monks' peaceful protests

Police attack peacefully protesting monks in Tibet

Protest inside Tibet captured on tourists' cameras

Hacking the Himalayas: Xeni's stories and trek-blog from Tibet and India

Boing Boing tv: Miss Tibet/Eames Elephants

Google, China, and genocide: web censorship and Tibet

The Los Angeles vigil continues on Friday, March 21, from 5-7pm, at the Los Angeles Federal Building, 11000 Wilshire Blvd.

Alt-music interrogator Russell Porter has quite a following in the UK; his Porter Report videos chronicle culture with aggressive wit and offbeat charm. Today, the "professional chancer and well known layabout" joins us on Boing Boing TV for an interview with Rosa Rex and Katy Klaw, better known as the Blues / Rockabilly duo Peggy Sue and the Pirates. Mr. Porter ends with a wet offshore homage to "swimmin' with bowlegged wimmin."

Here are previous BBtv episodes featuring Russell Porter. (special thanks to Jolon Bankey).

Remember IM IN UR MANGER / KILLIN UR SAVIOR"? That was the genius work of internet animation funnymakers Matt Burnett and Ben Levin, aka For Tax Reasons. Today, they offer an all-new, all-awesome animated short as an exclusive for Boing Boing tv viewers, and by that, we mean YOU. Includes Steampunk, LARP armor, papercraft, Commodore 64s, MMORPGs, Final Fantasy, suicide cults, and meditations on bad UI -- some of the many things that make Boing Boing great.

In part two of today's episode -- what's the secret behind For Tax Reasons' terrific work? They make those fancy animations with hard labor coerced from underpaid, non-union robots. Robots with simmering resentments that might! just! blow! up!

A number of credit card companies now issue credit cards with embedded RFIDs (radio frequency ID tags), with promises of enhanced security and speedy transactions.

But on today's episode of Boing Boing tv, hacker and inventor Pablos Holman shows Xeni how you can use about $8 worth of gear bought on eBay to read personal data from those credit cards -- cardholder name, credit card number, and whatever else your bank embeds in this manner.

Fears over data leaks from RFID-enabled cards aren't new, and some argue they're overblown -- but this demo shows just how cheap and easy the "sniffing" can be.

This episode is part of our ongoing series of interviews with some of the thinkers, hackers, and tinkerers at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference this year.

Today on Boing Boing tv, Xeni speaks with defense technology journalist Noah Shachtman about the role technology plays in the Iraq war. This episode is part of our ongoing series of interviews with some of the thinkers, hackers, and tinkerers at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference this year.

Noah is a contributor to Wired, and the editor of Wired's defense tech blog Danger Room. Don't miss his recent Wired magazine feature, "How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social — Not Electronic."