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).

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.