The Agonist - Olympics

The 2010 Winter Olympics

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 13:48:00 -0700

Travis Lupik | Vancouver | July 28

Georgia Strait - What are Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s plans for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games? And—perhaps the more pressing question—what are they up to in Vancouver right now in relation to the Games?

Careful watching this video--

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:11:05 -0700

I think this qualifies as *OUCH*....

Olympics: Child singer revealed as fake

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:58:19 -0700

Tania Branigan | Beijing | August 12

The Guardian - When nine-year-old Lin Miaoke launched into Ode to the Motherland at the Olympic opening ceremony, she became an instant star.

"Tiny singer wins heart of nation," China Daily sighed; "Little girl sings, impresses the world," gushed another headline, perhaps in reference to Lin's appearance on the front of the New York Times. Countless articles lauded the girl in the red dress who "lent her voice" to the occasion.

But now it emerges that Lin lent someone else's voice, following high-level discussions - which included a member of the Politburo - on the relative photogenicity of small children.

The recording to which Lin mouthed along on Friday was by the even younger Yang Peiyi. It seems that Yang's uneven teeth, while unremarkable in a seven-year-old, were considered potentially damaging to China's international image.

"This is in the national interest. It is the image of our national music, national culture. Especially the entrance of our national flag; this is an extremely important, extremely serious matter," Chen Qigang, the event's general music designer, explained to a Beijing radio station.

Beijing Faked Part of Opening Ceremony Fireworks

The Epoch Times, By Yves Dumans & Samuel Spencer, August 11

The almost three billion people viewing the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics apparently have been tricked. While international consumers have dealt with a massive influx of poor quality, counterfeit—and poisonous—Chinese goods in recent years, the People’s Republic of China has spared little expense in its latest artificial export: ‘fake fireworks’.

The global audience watched a series of 29 giant footsteps, lit by fireworks, going from Tiananmen Square to the Olympic stadium, symbolizing the 29th Olympiad.

Actually, according to Gao Xiaolong, the head of the visual effects team, what the viewers saw was a computer animation meticulously prepared months ago. Only the last of the 29 fireworks was shown in real time.

The Crystal Rock CGG Company, in China, took a year to create the animation. To provide a complete cover-up of the ‘counterfeit work,’ the Beijing Meteorological office was consulted to properly recreate the hazy effect of the Beijing night smog. As a finishing touch a ‘shaky camera effect’ was inserted to simulate filming from a helicopter.

See also Reuters/Hollywood Reporter: Olympics, NBC dogged by fakery accusations

China admits using 'cheer squads' at Olympics

The Times Of London, By Ashling O'Connor, August 12

Beijing - Chinese Olympic organisers today admitted to deploying “cheer squads” to create atmosphere and disguise blocks of empty seats in the sports venues.

The legions of spectators wearing matching yellow t-shirts and banging together oversized inflatable batons have been highly visible at the first sold-out Games.

Wang Wei, vice-president of the Beijing Olympic Organising Committee (Bocog) revealed they were volunteers shipped in to “create a good atmosphere” by cheering for both sides at team events.

Sitting in seats not taken up by sponsors, Olympic officials and spectators arriving later as sessions get more interesting, they are being used to cover up the embarrassment of having empty rows at events that are supposed to be full. “If people turn up they will let them take their seats,” Mr Wang said.

The use of fake fans – on the back of an admission that the fireworks at the opening ceremony were touched up with special effects for TV - has caused consternation among real fans locked outside the stadiums. The only events not sold out are the football matches, which are taking place outside Beijing.

Yawn

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 03:53:16 -0700

The Olympics start in a few hours. I won't be watching, in case you were wondering. I'm going to watch "Shawshank Redemption" on my iPod and also finish watching the final season of Deadwood. It's Friday and I'm still not quite up to going out and carrying on, so I'll just hang out in my flat tonight. I'm sure someone will SMS me if something important is happening. Yawn.

U.S.-China Olympic rivalry goes beyond counting medals

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:38:40 -0700

Jack Chang | August 7

McClatchy - While China has billed the 2008 Summer Games starting Friday as the coming-out party of a new world power, the United States enters the 18-day competition struggling to stay on top both in athletics and on the world stage. Many observers are predicting a second-place U.S. finish in the total medals count, a result that would be seen by many as symbolic of a shift in the global balance of power.

It’s Time to Pump Up Your Olympism

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:43:14 -0700

That quadrennial nationalistic orgy known as the Olympics is once again upon us. Exactly what the Olympics are about has always been a touch unclear. This year’s extravaganza – if that is a good enough word for something that costs $17 billion – has the snappy motto “One World One Dream.” Maybe this means something in Chinese. In English it might as easily translate to “One World – One Can Only Dream.”

Of course, the Olympics are supposed to be about amateur athletes competing on the world stage. Ha ha ha. The host country has been snatching promising children away from their parents for at least a decade, locking them up in training facilities where they work out seven days a week, and letting them know that only gold medals are acceptable performance. That well known amateur basketball player Yao Ming will be leading the Chinese team, and the U.S. will again be recruiting their basketball players from the NBA.

Buzz and Digg this story

The athletics are all about gold medals and standing on platforms when your national anthem is played and your flag is raised. The league tables list medals by country, and everyone is anxious to see if China can wrest the gold medal title away from the U.S. I’m putting my bets on the Chinese, who are sending a record 639 athletes to the Olympics.

Plus, China gets something called the host nation advantage. If you look carefully at the rules of many of the more obscure sports, you see that when you get to the semi- finals, the officials have an obligation to insert a Chinese competitor if none has gotten that far. The rules for rifle shooting state that “If not otherwise qualified, the host nation automatically qualifies 1 place in each singles event and 1 place for each Team event”.

Rifle shooting, kayaking, table tennis, fencing, badminton, taekwando, beach volleyball, and similar sports are where the real medal haul is to be made. Some purists argue that these aren’t sports at all – they are more like hobbies or recreation. I suspect these sports are designed to encourage smaller nations to go to all the trouble and expense of participating in the Olympics. Scandinavian nations seem to excel at rifle shooting, and we all know who is going to dominate table tennis.

The International Olympic Committee doesn’t try hard to make an argument for these sports; the official IOC description of rhythmic gymnastics is that the history and purpose of the sport are “hazy”. This is one of the truly discriminatory sports in the Olympics; it is only open to women (maybe no one is willing to pay to watch men attempt to be rhythmic at gymnastics).

Rhythmic gymnastics won’t be the only hazy thing at these Olympics. One of the star performers at Beijing this month will be the famously opaque skies of China’s capital city. To have any hope that the sky will be anything other than its typical brown or grey, the Chinese government has gone to extraordinary lengths to set up a Potemkin village, not just an Olympic Village. One third of all cars have been banned from Beijing roads this past month, and almost all construction and a lot of manufacturing have ceased. So much industrial production has been halted across China that the GDP is expected to decline this summer as a result.

Still, independent tests have shown that as of this week particulate matter in Beijing’s air is ten times the acceptable international pollution standards. This is way, way down from the norm for a Chinese city, but still too dangerous for outdoor competition. The U.S. cycling team entered the Olympic Village wearing medical masks, and we should expect some of the outdoor athletes to compete this way. The Chinese government is going to be very prickly about this, since the Olympics are designed to showcase China in its rightful role as a major world power.

Why China thinks the world is going to be fooled by this Potemkin Village exercise is beyond belief. The Chinese government wants the world to see athletes competing in harmony, world records being set, and shiny new sports facilities on display. To be sure, there are some spectacular architectural venues arranged for these Olympics, starting with new stadiums in Tianjin and Shenyang. But the architectural stars of the show are in Beijing – the National Stadium (known as the Bird’s Nest) and the Aquatics Center. We should all enjoy these amazing buildings while we can, because once the Olympics are over they are going to disappear in the daily murk that constitutes Beijing’s skies.

Maybe I’m being too harsh on China’s government. The Olympics are now so grandiose, and so expensive, that only a government can put them on properly. The IOC has become the sporting arm of the United Nations, and one of the goals of the host nation is to have the most impressive list of world leaders attend the opening ceremonies. Everyone is anxious to see what George W. Bush is going to say about China’s appalling human rights record, but he may well say nothing. The White House has already made it clear it is not going to offend its principal banker.

All this nationalistic hype leads to inevitable contretemps. One typical flare-up occurred this week when the Chinese government welcomed the Macedonian team to the Olympic Village as from the “Republic of Macedonia.” As we all must surely know, the official UN name of this country is “The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”, since Greece insists only they have the right to use the name Macedonia.

Greece and Macedonia won’t be the first countries to battle over nationalist rights at the Olympics. The Olympics seems to attract these petty little controversies, and it is as if the countries that participate never read the Olympic Charter. The charter talks a great deal about the spirit of the Olympics, which is all well and good, but then it proceeds to label this spirit “Olympism”, which sounds like some horrible erectile dysfunction disease. Maybe that’s why no one pays attention to the spirit of the Olympics.

I’ll be watching some of the Olympics, because there are bound to be some thrilling and memorable athletic moments. I do draw the line at some sports, however, especially women’s gymnastics, which no longer has anything to do with women, but instead features pixie-like pre-pubescent little girls who apparently will never naturally pubesce as long as they expose their too-young bodies to the rigors of gymnastic training. The Chinese gymnastics team has already tripped up when it was discovered one of its stars, officially listed as 17, has a passport indicating she is only 14. She’s going to compete anyway. Another form of host nation advantage, and yet more proof that China uses child labor.

I’ll have to watch the Olympics through the filter of U.S. television, which is jingoistic and features stories mostly about U.S. athletes. When this gets to be too much, I'll take a break by tuning in to the Paralympics and the Special Olympics, which are running in tandem with the Beijing main stage events. You’ll be pleased to know that while the Paralympics does include a rifle shooting event, the Special Olympics do not.

And did you know that this is the first ever, official “green” Olympics? So far the only thing green about these Olympics is the algae that has been clogging up the water lanes that will be used for such crowd-pleasers as the “two person dinghy for men”, the “skiff mixed” event, and the “keelhaul for women.”

These won’t be the only people being keelhauled at the Olympics. Every Chinese official responsible for any part of the Olympics knows the penalty for failure. These Olympics are going to succeed, no matter what. So get your Olympism pumped up – the fun is about to begin!

Masks?

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:03:49 -0700

This is just dumb. First, it's a slap in the face of the Chinese and the pride they as a nation are justifiably taking in hosting the games.

Two, as the Times notes:

The Chinese and the International Olympic Committee, including Arne Ljungqvist, chair of the I.O.C. medical commission, have repeatedly said that athletes were not at risk because of the air quality here.

During a previously scheduled news conference Tuesday night, Ljungqvist dismissed the athletes’ actions as unnecessary.

“I don’t see the need for it, honestly,” Ljungqvist said of the masks, although he noted that some athletes with respiratory conditions may need to wear them.

So, unless all the American cyclists have respiratory conditions then there just isn't any need. Don't American athletes have any sense of political propriety, or rather just good manners?

More Uighur Violence

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 01:07:23 -0700

This is really saddening. It really breaks my heart to hear of this, and to know this is happening in a city I have very strong feelings for. From the article:

On Monday morning, Xinhua, the state news agency, reported what appeared to be the deadliest assault against Chinese security forces in recent memory: 16 policemen were killed and 16 others injured when attackers threw two grenades into a police station in the desert oasis town of Kashgar, in the far west, after driving a truck into the station at 8 a.m. Two men were arrested.

I can't say, however, that I am surprised. This would be the best chance the Uighur's would ever have to draw any serious news coverage to their plight--and a valid plight it is, what with the Chinese boot firmly lodged at their throats for so long and so hard. But what pains me the most is that this attention getting is being done the worst possible way at the worst possible time. They won't elicit any sympathy from anyone, no matter how deserved. The killing of innocents never does. Even if they are policemen, and in some sense legitimate targets. I still don't understand why people don't just lay down in the middle of the road sometimes. What power a protest like that would portray? Don't we all remember the lone man stopping a column of tanks in Beijing in 1989?

People of Beijing told what not to wear

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 07:21:08 -0700

Stephen McGinty | Aug 2

Scotsman - THE Little Red Book, the sayings of Chairman Mao, has been replaced by a little red booklet that instructs Beijing's residents how to act and dress ahead of next week's Olympics.

** Don't mix more than three colours

** Do shake hands for three seconds only

** Don't wear your pyjamas in public

Like a totalitarian version of Trinny and Susannah, Zheng Mojie, deputy director of the Office of Capital Spiritual Civilisation Construction Commission, has penned a booklet posted to four million Beijing households stating acceptable standards of dress and behaviour.

IOC says it cannot order China to lift internet blocks

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:59:27 -0700

July 30

dpa - The chairman of the International Olympic Committee's press commission, Kevan Gosper, has said he was 'disappointed' that the Chinese authorities were blocking websites deemed sensitive, but that the IOC cannot tell China what to do, according to a report in the South China Morning Post Wednesday.

Gosper's statements to the newspaper indicate the IOC apparently knew in advance that the websites would be blocked, despite having told the international media that the estimated 25,000 journalists who are in Beijing already or will arrive in coming days to report about the 2008 Olympic Games would be granted unfettered access.

'I have also been advised that some of the IOC officials had negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked,' the Hong Kong-based newspaper quoted Gosper saying.

'I would like it all to be open. I am not here to defend the Chinese decisions. I am here to ensure journalists can report on the Games. I am disappointed the access is not wider. But I can't tell the Chinese what to do,' Gosper said.

Gosper told the SCMP that the IOC had negotiated with the Beijing organizers for 'unimpeded and uncensored' Internet access for journalists, and asked for reporters to be allowed to report on 'about what else happened elsewhere in China' and not just the Games.

'You are dealing with a communist country that has censorship. You are getting what they say you can have,' Gosper was quoted as saying.

Gosper also admitted the Olympic movement had inadvertently misled the media over the past seven years into thinking they would be granted unfettered access during the Games.

'If you have been misled by what I have told you [over the months and years] about there being free Internet access during the Games, then I apologise,' Gosper told the newspaper.

The SCMP said that when asked if he will discuss the situation with the Beijing Olympics organizing committee (BOCOG), and within the IOC, Gosper replied: 'I suspect they have made their decision.'

Websites critical of China or deemed politically sensitive, including ones for longtime critics of China's human rights record - Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch - are banned, as well as websites for Tibetan rights groups and the outlawed spiritual movement Falun Gong.

Sun Weide, spokesman for BOCOG, rejected criticism by journalists and said the internet access provided at the Games main press centre was 'sufficient.'.

'The coverage of the Games is not affected,' he said.

'You have comprehensive access,' Sun told journalists.

Sun justified blocking access to the website of the Falun Gong medita

Old News, Courtesy The New York Times

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:39:27 -0700

Funny, the old hutong neighborhoods have been disappearing for the last thirty years. But leave it to the New York Times to put it on the front page and explain to us it's all the fault of the Olympics. Anything to sell the games, fraud that they are.

Let me add, before anyone gets into a tizzy: the games are a fraud not because they are in Beijing. They are a fraud because they lost the true Olympic spirit a long time ago, when VISA and MacDonalds and all the other commercial outlets weren't the 'Official insert name here" crap began. It's all a bunch of commercial garbage now.

Lhasa's monks all but vanish in Chinese crackdown

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:53:10 -0700

Geoffrey York | Lhasa | June 23

Globe & Mail - Severe restrictions, including checkpoints and surveillance, imposed since wave of anti-government protests in March, exiles say.

The pilgrims returned to the Potala Palace yesterday, spinning their prayer wheels and prostrating themselves in front of the Dalai Lama's ancient palace on a mountaintop in Lhasa.

For two days, the Buddhist pilgrims had been pushed to the sidelines to make room for the Olympic torch relay in Lhasa. The traditional pilgrimage route at the Potala Palace was unceremoniously shut down, in one of many security measures by Chinese authorities, even though a month-long Buddhist festival has drawn thousands of pilgrims to the Tibetan capital.

But as the pilgrims returned, a mystery remained: Where are Lhasa's monks? A visit yesterday to the Sera monastery, the second-biggest Buddhist monastery in Tibet, found that its 550 monks had virtually disappeared from sight. Most buildings and outdoor areas at the monastery were nearly empty, and only about 10 monks could be seen.

Three days of travel around Lhasa - the first permitted visit by a Canadian journalist since the Tibetan uprising in March - found that the monks were almost entirely gone from the city streets, even in the historic quarter around the Jokhang temple, the holiest temple in Tibetan Buddhism

Resistance snuffed out as Olympic torch tours Tibet

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:06:33 -0700

Clifford Coonan | Beijing | June 23

Independent - China paraded the Olympic torch through the streets of Lhasa at the weekend in a blaze of red flags, eager to present a picture of national unity and domestic harmony just three months after the Tibetan provincial capital was rocked by anti-Chinese riots.

With the Olympic Games to begin in Beijing on 8 August, senior Chinese Communist Party officials in charge of the restive province used the opportunity of the torch relay to denounce the Dalai Lama and underline China's tight grip on the Himalayan region. "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it," said Zhang Qingli, the hardliner who heads Tibet's Communist Party. "It is certain we will be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama's clique."

Students for a Free Tibet: Announcement

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:05:15 -0700

Subject: FreeTibet2008.org: SFT Launches New Olympics Website /Video

With the start of the Beijing Olympics only 49 days away, SFT HQ is stepping up our Olympic campaign efforts. To ensure that you are kept up to date with news, analysis, and ways to participate in creative, strategic and effective actions for Tibet leading up to and during the Games, we are excited to launch SFT's Olympics website: http://www.FreeTibet2008.org.

Visit http://www.FreeTibet2008.org now and watch our new SFT Olympics Campaign video, a moving account of what is at stake inside Tibet and the power we have – as Tibetans, supporters, and people of conscience – to make history for Tibet at this crucial time.

We are about to enter the most critical stage in our organization's history, and indeed in the history of the Tibet movement, and we need your help.

After you watch SFT's new Olympics Campaign video, download it and share it with your friends and family. Post it on your Facebook page, send it to all your email contacts and encourage everyone you know to donate to SFT in this Olympic year.

With your help, we will raise the necessary funds to seize this once-in-a-lifetime Olympic opportunity to make history for Tibet.

Make a donation right now: http://www.FreeTibet2008.org/donate

As the Chinese government prepares to launch its single-largest propaganda exercise ever, all of us at SFT are working with ever-greater intensity to keep the world's attention focused on the Tibetan people's cries for freedom. Tibetans continue to speak out despite the terrible risks, and need you in this critical time.

Please support our efforts by donating to SFT's Olympics action fund now.

This is the most urgent time to support SFT as we effectively expend tremendous physical and financial resources toward realizing our goal – and the goal of the Tibetan people – human rights and freedom for Tibet.

This truly is the time. With your help, Tibet will be free.

Yours,
Lhadon Tethong

P.S. Please visit http://www.FreeTibet2008.org today. We've designed it as a one-stop resource for everything related to SFT's Olympics campaign, featuring a media center, a photo and video gallery, resources and tools to help you get involved and take action, and streamlined information and analysis from SFT's website and leading blogs.

Security, choreography mark Silk Road torch relay

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:42:20 -0700

Ben Blanchard | Kashgar, China | June 17

Reuters - The Olympic torch was paraded on Wednesday through the sensitive former Silk Road city of Kashgar, home to ethnic-minority Muslim Uighurs, under the scrutiny of Chinese soldiers and choreographed cheering crowds.

China has accused Uighur separatists in oil-rich Xinjiang of plotting attacks with al Qaeda's support to help achieve their goal of establishing an independent country called East Turkestan.

The government banned all but carefully chosen members of the public, including Islamic leaders in head dresses and children in traditional attire, from the relay route and ordered everyone else to stay at home and watch on television.

Shops were shut as small groups waved Chinese and Olympic flags under a bright, clear sky. Between the groups, the streets were deserted.

Uighur children, some holding large flags, chanted "Go China, Go Olympics, Go Sichuan and Go Kashgar" in the square outside the giant Idkhar Mosque, closed to the public. The Sichuan mention referred to last month's devastating earthquake.

Everyone on the street wore a sticker with a number and the Olympic flame in an apparent security measure, as soldiers lined the route at every 30 metres (yards).

"We will share together the joy of the Olympic torch relay," Xinjiang governor Ismail Tiliwaldi told a carefully selected crowd of government officials and children.

China claims to have cracked at least two Xinjiang-based terror plots this year, one involving an attempt to bring down an airliner flying to Beijing and the other to kidnap foreigners and carry out suicide attacks at the Olympics.

Propaganda posters in Chinese and English and flags to welcome the torch were strung along the relay route, though there was little evidence of the Uighur language being used and hardly any signs or flags in Kasghar's backstreets.