Olympic girl seen but not heard - CNN.com

BEIJING, China (CNN) — A little girl and her song captivated millions of viewers during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. But what they saw was not what they heard.

Games organizers confirm that Lin Miaoke [above right], who performed “Ode to the Motherland” as China’s flag was paraded Friday into Beijing’s National Stadium, was not singing at all.

Lin was lip-syncing to the sound of another girl, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi [above left], who was heard but not seen, apparently because she was deemed not cute enough.

“The reason was for the national interest,” said Chen Qigang, the ceremony’s musical director, in a state radio interview. “The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feeling and expression. … Lin Miaoke is excellent in those aspects.”

From the Opening Ceremony, where one little girl was put on display, while another provided the voice behind the scenes, to the women’s gymnastics team, where the “16 year-old” gymnasts still have their baby teeth (despite what their passports indicate), the Chinese propaganda machine is out in full force.

But what do you expect when their stated purpose is to beat the American teams in the medal count. The Chinese are certainly outdistancing the United States in gold medals, but thus far, the overall medal count is fairly close.

Despite the lofty ideals, cheating always happens at the Olympics … but I would never have suspected it on such a grand scale … falsifying documents, lip-syncing … you have to wonder if there will be any doping controversies popping up for either the Chinese or for the Americans. If any Americans are busted for doping, you know that the American propaganda machine will also turn out to try to show that the American Olympians are somehow being framed by the Chinese.

Like many, I am an Olympics junkie … but I’m starting to get jaded by the politics. It’s almost as bad as cycling’s brouhaha between the UCI and Amaury Sports Organisation (the organizers of the Tour de France).

Georgia: Attacks continuing despite Russia halt claim - CNN.com

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that he had ordered an end to military operations against Georgia, but Tbilisi reported more attacks after the statement was made.

Medvedev’s announcement came minutes before French President Nicolas Sarkozy was to land in Moscow to negotiate terms for a possible cease-fire.

“I have reached a decision to halt the operation to force the Georgian authorities to peace,” Medvedev said. “The aggressor has been punished and has incurred very significant losses. Its armed forces are disorganized.”

“The statement on the halt of the military action by Russia is the news we had expected. It’s good news,” Sarkozy said later, according to an Interfax report.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was also involved the talks.

Medvedev’s decision would end five days of fighting that began in Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia. Watch Georgia’s reaction to halt in fighting »

The Georgian government claimed that despite Medvedev’s announcement, Russian warplanes struck two villages and military forces bombed an ambulance outside the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

Buried deeper in the story:

An Georgian Interior Ministry official added that Russian bombs hit one of the three pipelines carrying oil to the Black Sea port of Poti. There was no oil in the pipeline at the time, the ministry official said.

UK-based engery giant BP later said it had shut down two oil pipelines in the region as a “precautionary measure” linked to the security situation.

A precautionary measure to … oh … raise oil prices again? This, like all wars, is about control of resources; just as much here as it is in the Middle East. This time, it’s Russia wanting control of oil that is currently under the control of a pro-American government in Georgia.

I think the Russian government is also trying to show that the nation is still a force to be reckoned with in international affairs. Over the past few years, the focus has definitely been more on China’s rise as a global political and economic power, and the Olympics brings that spotlight even closer to Russia’s neighbor to the south.

InBev Mulls Bid for Rival Anheuser - WSJ.com

Anheuser-Busch Cos. [NYSE:BUD] faces a potential assault from beer giant InBev NV and activist investors that threatens to place the 150-year-old American icon in foreign hands.

Leuven, Belgium-based InBev is weighing an unsolicited takeover of the Budweiser maker, people familiar with the brewer’s planning said on Friday. Anheuser-Busch shares jumped 7.66%, to $56.61 on the news, giving the company a market value of $40.4 billion. Trading volume totaled 11 times the daily average.

InBev has yet to make a final decision on whether to pursue an unsolicited offer, an approach that would be fraught with complications, the people said. But now may be the time to strike given how the depreciating dollar makes U.S. corporate assets cheaper for foreign buyers. Behind SABMiller Co., InBev and Anheuser are the world’s second- and third-largest brewers as measured by volume. Together they would control 300 brands on six continents, brewing 10 billion gallons of beer each year. Both companies declined to comment on deal speculation Friday.

InBev’s designs on Anheuser come as beer makers face pressure to trim costs because of increasing expenses for commodities such as barley, aluminum and glass, making it more important to gain economies of scale. Plans by SABMiller to combine its U.S. operations with Coors Brewing Co., a unit of Molson Coors Brewing Co., have also increased pressure for other brewers to consolidate. Heineken NV and Carlsberg A/S recently clinched a deal to acquire Scottish & Newcastle PLC, the biggest brewer in the United Kingdom.

InBev, which makes Stella Artois and Beck’s, is eager to gain a foothold in the U.S., where it has a tiny presence. The U.S. is the biggest beer market in terms of profits, though sales growth is tepid. The companies have relatively little geographic overlap. InBev has a strong footprint in emerging markets, including Brazil, but is exposed to some slower-growth markets, like Western Europe. By combining, InBev and Anheuser would gain a stronger position in China, where they have both been expanding in recent years. China is the world’s largest beer market by volume.

During my youthful years in Belgium in the early 1980s, Stella Artois was the primary beverage of weekend consumption … other InBev brands of Belgian brews include Jupiler (eh), Hoegaarden, and Leffe (mmmmm….). And what self-respecting cyclist doesn’t like Belgian beer?

InBev also controls a host of other incredible world-wide brands, like Spaten, Skol, Staropramen, Bass, and Murphy’s.

If this takeover attempt means that more good European beers can find their way into the US in general (and Utah in specific), then I say “Bring it, baby!”

China doctors the news of Olympic torch relay

The English-language China Daily newspaper described London’s upheaval in the streets as “disruptions by a few Tibetan separatists and their supporters.” In the first reports from Paris by the state-run Xinhua news agency, the journalist cited “technical difficulties” as the reason the torch was extinguished and carried on a bus rather than by someone on foot.

A day later, a spokesman for the Beijing organizing committee of the Olympics told a hastily called news conference that though the relay had been disrupted, China intended to complete the longest torch run in the history of the Games.

Dissenting voices have been silenced even more than usual, so it’s even tougher than in normal times to gauge popular opinion. But censorship in China begins early and political debate is limited, so to many the torch demonstrations seem like overblown personal attacks against Chinese people, not just criticism of their government.

Sophie Richardson, Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said the dangers of China’s heavy-handed censorship are evident.

“The downside of suppressing free information and substituting propaganda is quite clear, be it about toxic toys or repressed ethnic minorities - the eventual eruption is far worse than it might have been had it been dealt with openly,” Richardson said.

“As long as China blocks the free flow of information, it is unreliable as a trading partner, as a strategic partner or as a ‘responsible power.’”

I’ve gotten a fair number of spam comments professing to be from people telling me “I know nothing about China”, and that “Tibetans, even the Dalai Lama” don’t want their freedom.

I might believe some of the comments are legit if I didn’t get the same comment 3 times in an hour from same IP address (albeit with different email addresses, and slightly different spelling).

Look … I’m not anti-Chinese. I’ve got nothing against the Chinese people; but the people aren’t the government, and it’s the government’s policies that are causing problems.

BTW, spam-commenters … I don’t like the US government right now either … but that doesn’t make me an anti-American, either.

It’s called free expression. Maybe someday the Chinese government will decide to allow the Chinese (and Tibetan) citizenry a chance to give it a try.

Protesters building steam in S.F.

On the day before the Olympic torch was to be carried along the citys waterfront, hundreds of protesters took to the streets today to rally support for freedom in Tibet and to decry the Peoples Republic of China rule there.

The roving demonstration moved from United Nations Plaza to City Hall to the Chinese Consulate at Geary Boulevard and Laguna Street in the Western Addition. The consulate building was protected by dozens of San Francisco police officers.

The protesters remained peaceful throughout the day, waving the colorful Tibetan flag, singing the Tibetan national anthem and chanting slogans denouncing China. They watched the lighting of the Tibetan Freedom Torch and cheered as caged white doves were released into the sky.

The gathering was timed to coincide with the appearance of the Olympic Torch, which is scheduled to make its only North American appearance in San Francisco Wednesday as part of a five-continent relay leading up to the Summer Games in Beijing.

“This is not about disrupting the torch-bearers. This is about China using the torch for political purposes and we using it right back,” Lhadon Tethong, executive director if Students for a Free Tibet, said through a bullhorn in front of the Chinese Consulate.

Protesters, upset with Chinas policies in Tibet, Sudan and with the Falun Gong spiritual movement, have disrupted the relay in Athens, London and Paris. San Francisco officials also are bracing for demonstrations by China critics and counterdemonstrations by pro-China supporters.

Previous posts on this blog illustrate what I feel the athletes should do when it comes to the Beijing Olympics, but all of the news about the protests surrounding the torch made me wonder how the whole torch carrying thing came about.

So I do what many people do when confronted with one of those odd questions … what is the history of the Olympic Torch relay?

Well … according to a 2004 article in the New York Times, the torch relay was introduced by none other than Adolf Hitler for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, as part of his Nazi propaganda machine.

According to the London Times:

The torch relay is a celebration of the ancient fires that burnt through the original Olympiads but the idea of carrying the flame from Olympia to the host city each year was invented by the organisers of the 1936 Berlin Games.

The relay, captured in Leni Riefenstahl’s film, “Olympia”, was part of the Nazi propaganda machine’s attempt to add myth and mystique to Adolf Hitler’s regime.

Hitler saw the link with the ancient Games as the perfect way to illustrate his belief that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich.

Surprisingly, the use of the Olympic rings, originally adopted as a symbol of the Games at the 1914 Olympic Congress prior to the cancelled 1916 Olympic Games, were also widely promoted by Riefenstuhl’s film (when she had the rings carved in stone at Delphi).

Joy.

Perhaps it’s a good idea that the torch was extinguished not once, but twice by the French, and the American leg of the journey tomorrow (Wednesday) in San Francisco may actually be cancelled because of the protests.

It certainly seems fitting that the Chinese government has promoted the this year’s relay as a Journey of Harmony … but it’s too bad their harmonic convergence seems to be more in line with with the powers of oppression and genocide, rather than truly of peace.

Last week I posted an entry supporting a boycott of the opening ceremony at the Olympic Games. Thor Hushovd listened. Okay, maybe not to me, but the idea is taking hold amongst athletes.

VeloNews | Hushovd considers opening ceremony boycott

Crédit Agricole’s ace sprinter Thor Hushovd says he is prepared to boycott the opening ceremony to the Beijing Olympics in August to protest Chinese repression in Tibet.

“We sports people do not have any particular responsibility to take a stance over what is happening in China,” he told Norway’s Faedrelandsvennen newspaper.

“But all the same we can have some influence by snubbing the opening ceremony in Beijing. That would be a valid form of protest and I am prepared to do it,” Hushovd said. “However, from there to boycotting the Games entirely is a huge step.”

Now, in my world, this is a huge thing … but in the grand scheme, cycling is not a major sport, at least not in the United States; as evidenced by the slim amount of television coverage it gets from NBC; and as Hushovd is a Norwegian, it’s likely to make little impact. But if Hushovd’s decision can start affecting other cyclists from other nations, and if those nations’ cyclists can inspire their compatriots participating in other sports, then maybe, just maybe the impact can be felt.

We need more athletes to step up and speak. In the United States, it will take a vocal stand by the stars of Swimming, Track & Field, and Gymnastics. Unfortunately, I don’t know who they are … is Amanda Beard still swimming?

We all know that not only is this an election year, but it’s an Olympic year, with the 2008 Olympic Games being held in Beijing this upcoming August.

With the recent crackdown by the Chinese government in Tibet, along with their ongoing support of the Sudanese government (which is contributing to the problems in Darfur), there have been a number of calls for an Olympic boycott.

I, for one, don’t think a full-scale boycott is the way. Then I ran across this article:

Calls Mount for Olympic Ceremony Boycott

PARIS (AP) - Moves to punish China over its handling of violence in Tibet gained momentum Tuesday, with a novel suggestion for a mini-boycott of the Beijing Olympics by VIPs at the opening ceremony.

Such a protest by world leaders would be a huge slap in the face for China’s Communist leadership.

Can you imagine the embarrassment felt if all the various world leaders opted not to attend the opening ceremonies, as they are currently expected to do? Can you imagine the further embarrassment felt if the world’s athletes opted not to attend as well?

Elsewhere in the article, it states:

Such an opening ceremony boycott presumably would not include the athletes, who under Olympic rules are forbidden from making any kind of protest at events or venues - including the opening ceremony. It’s not mandatory that every athlete participate in the opening ceremony.

I think that all athletes, especially the American ones, should skip the opening ceremony … not in protest, but because it’s not mandatory. And while protesting is banned at events and venues, I hope that there are some athletes who are courageous enough to stand up to the IOC, to their national Olympic committees, and to the Chinese and express their opinions on live international television, as did Tommie Smith and John Carlos 40 years ago in Mexico City, even though it meant their expulsion from the Games.

There are rules which are meant to be followed (i.e., those ensuring the fairness of the competition), and their are rules which should be broken at almost every opportunity (i.e., those meant to suppress free expression and dissent, because they might prove an embarrassment).