IOC Further demonstrates why it is a political agency

Ok, so ... let's follow this train of thought for a moment.

The US, primarily, and according to the article, pushed the IOC about Russia and doping.  Because the whole doping issue makes the IOC look bad, the IOC will take that out on LA's bid for the Olympics.

Yes.  Ok.  So, a question is - did any US athletes use any drugs to enhance their abilities in the last 14 days?  Not as far as anyone is aware.  Did any Ethiopian athletes use any drugs to enhance their abilities?  Not as far as anyone is aware.   Did any athletes from the UK use ... Not as far as anyone is aware.  Did any Canadian ... Not as far as anyone is aware.  So ... why is it that the US will get discriminated against because they pushed the IOC to do what the IOC should do, because it is their responsibility to do it.

They are further turning this into a political program - back to Beijing?  Really.  Why not North Korea.

Anti-U.S. mood could hurt Los Angeles in bid for Games

August 22, 2016

By Karolos Grohmann

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A bid by Los Angeles to host the 2024 Olympic Games could fall victim to anti-American sentiment brewing inside the International Olympic Committee, sources inside the IOC said.

The bid, which is competing against three European cities, risks an anti-U.S. protest vote by several IOC members angry over America's prominent role in pursuing doping allegations against Russian athletes, the sources said.

The IOC will decide on bids from Los Angeles, Paris, Rome and Budapest in September next year.

At least three non-Russian IOC members, speaking on condition of anonymity, said America's intervention into allegations of systematic Russian doping had marred the run-up to the Rio Games and tarnished the IOC brand.

"Of course the Los Angeles bid will face some consequences from this," an IOC member said.

The U.S. Department of Justice is probing allegations of Russian doping on U.S. soil, and the U.S. anti-doping agency (USADA) called for a total ban on Russians in Rio even as U.S. athletes with a history of positive drugs tests competed there.

[Ok, so ... an American athlete from 4 years ago or 3 years ago was suspended by the USOC or some other agency in the US for using some drug or having something in their system ... versus athletes in Russia being given the drugs as part of a governmental project - supported and endorsed from the top down.  An individual athlete in the US taking sudaphed is different than a Russian still taking, just having taken, and having done so with the Russian equivalent of the USOC telling them to.  So sorry if the US wants an equal playing field that benefits all athletes, including Americans.]

None of the IOC members interviewed by Reuters could give an estimate of how many of the IOC's 98 members were thinking along the same lines. Elections for host cities can be decided by a handful of votes and be heavily influenced by politics.

Last year's vote for the 2022 winter Olympics was won by Beijing, with just four votes more than Kazakhstan's Almaty.

Russia alone has three IOC members.

The head of the LA 2024 bid team, Casey Wasserman, said it would not make sense for IOC members to vote against Los Angeles on the basis of investigations totally unrelated to its bid.

"Doping agencies in America are independent. They are not under the control of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), they are certainly not under the control of a private independent bid which is what we are," Wasserman said.

"We are independent of USOC and of the city of Los Angeles, we are private and to somehow use that against us seems misguided," he added.

LA Mayor Eric Garcetti has acknowledged that there could be a backlash from some IOC members but has also distanced the bid from the actions of the other, independent U.S. bodies, such as the Department of Justice and USADA.

Another IOC member said a separate Department of Justice investigation into corruption at world soccer's governing body, FIFA, also rankled with some committee members, given close links between the two sporting bodies.

Several senior FIFA officials were arrested last year, woken up at their five-star hotel in Zurich and held in prison pending extradition to the United States over corruption and embezzlement charges.

IOC member Issa Hayatou of Cameroon is FIFA's senior vice president, while Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad al Sabah of Kuwait, who is in charge of the IOC's central fund, the Olympic Solidarity, is a member of the FIFA council.

Neither of the two members, who declined to comment, has been named in relation to investigations of the FIFA cases.

Another IOC member said there would be "significant" fallout for the Los Angeles bid.

A Canadian lawyer's investigation into what he called systematic Russian doping led to the world athletics federation banning the country's track and field team, with the exception of just one athlete, from the Rio Games.

USADA had formed a coalition of anti-doping bodies calling for a blanket ban on all Russian competitors at the Games, but the IOC eventually cleared more than 270 Russians to compete.

Last month, United World Wrestling Federation President Nenad Lalovic, an IOC member and a member of the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) board, made comments to Reuters that were indicative of the frustration felt by some IOC members.

"USADA should be focused on the health of American athletes and those competing in the United States," Lalovic said.

"Now it seems that USADA and the Canadians took over responsibility of WADA. Nobody entitled them to do that."

The Olympics End and nothing major fell apart

Brazil should be relieved.  They can let out a huge sigh of relief now that the Olympics have concluded.  There was no major war in Rio between the army, police, and gangs.  No major loss of life - just the odd body.  A few shootouts with the army did occur, and green water, sewage and such, but when living in Brazil, I assume this is to be expected.

NBC saw its revenues drop, viewers flee, ratings fall through the floor, and generally far fewer people wanting to watch a mess unfold. 

[An aside -  The Lochte story.  Only part of interest to me is the backstory or behind the scenes - why did the police watch the videos, and go searching for the CCTV cameras from wherever it was the swimmers were or went.  I would think, just me, if I report a crime occurring on the Black Canyon Highway at Bethany Home off ramp (Phoenix) that the police would investigate that area and not go to my home and check in my pool house in the back yard, and talk to my neighbors and the trash man.  That would seem to me to be the normal way one investigates - and in Brazil where robberies do occur very frequently and the general outline of where and how is the norm for that area - where taxi's routinely do not stop at red lights at night over fears of exactly what Lochte claimed happening.  I dunno, just an interesting question.]

In any case, I vote to return the Olympics to Greece where they should remain for the next 10 or so games, and then we can re-evaluate things. 

This would reduce the bribes, and make the IOC less of a graft organization.  It would allow for a controlled environment given the Olympics having been held there already ...

There are many reasons. 

The costs and investment - for so many countries who have infrastructure issues, spending $10-30 billion to host games that do not generate a profit ... while those funds could be used for the domestic infrastructure ... makes more sense.

When many countries who bid fall into autocratic or corrupt categories in almost every area of domestic and international discussion, why.  Why let a country who cannot afford the games, spend millions to bid, on something that will cost them billions and return nothing but debt to a country already riddled with debt.

Send them back to Greece.  Let the games stay there and maybe, become less political and less corrupt.

Brazilian Palestine

What we could hear if we attended the Olympics in  Brasil -

"Welcome Olympians.  Welcome visitors of the world, to Brasil.  Please stow your wallets, cameras, rings, watches, hats, purses, chains, pendants, and anything more valuable than a postage stamp, ensure your kevlar vest is properly fastened, and your helmet is in place before you enter the queue.  Ensure you have the paperwork signed before you get to the signing stations.  Form A is your life insurance papers, Form B is your statement of authorization transfering funds from your bank in the event you are kidnapped for ransom, and Form C authorizes us to inject you with a GPS tracking device in order that we are better able to protect you.  Have a nice time at the Olympics."






The Times
February 27, 2010



The gun-toting boys from Brazil who rule Rio’s ‘Corner of Fear’


Dom Phillips in São Paulo


A boy steps boldly into the night traffic and waves a gun to bring the cars to a halt, clearing a path for a motorcycle which screeches into the intersection. Riding pillion is another boy, brandishing a machinegun.

Later two teenagers, also riding pillion on motorbikes, flash their guns at other motorists; nearby, a boy can be seen taking aim with a rifle equipped with a telescopic sight. Other youths wander the street smoking crack.

For residents, the junction between the busy Dom Helder Câmara and dos Democráticos, in North Rio de Janeiro, has become known as the Corner of Fear — and video footage of daily life there has shocked a nation already familiar with guns and violence.

The latest images, captured by undercover journalists from the Rio tabloid Extra, have exposed the city’s criminal youth culture in a manner that echoes the journalistic investigation featured in the film City of God.

The age of the criminals — one pistol-toting boy is 12 — is obvious cause for alarm, but so is the seeming impunity with which they act.

The video footage has provided a glimpse into the city’s underworld that hardly touches Rio’s wealthier citizens.

Local newspapers rarely show at first hand the violence that permeates the city’s slums (favelas). Since the brutal torture and murder of the journalist Tim Lopes — who was caught filming secretly in the Vila Cruzeiro favela in 2002 — Brazilian reporters have been reluctant to take their cameras into slum areas. Any reports that are filed tend to come from correspondents talking from inside armoured cars, or are images showing the aftermath of a shooting.


“What is shocking is this parallel power, the fact that they are very young,” said André Cabral De Almeida Cardoso, 41, a teacher. “They are so brazen about it.”

Valera dos Santos, 34, a maid who lives in a favela in São Paulo, said: “My God, I’ve never seen pictures like this. It’s absurd, they’re just boys.”

The journalists who captured the images were also taken aback. “Even knowing the reality of what could happen, you are still shocked by the glamour that these weapons represent in the arms of minors,” said Fernando Torres, 27, one of a team of three who spent four nights undercover at the Corner of Fear.

“These images are desolate,” said Lucy Petroucic, 56, a translator. “These boys have become little Taleban who think they have nothing to lose.”

Within hours, police arrested one of a group of bandits shown in the video and promised that changes were on the way. Luiz Fernando Pezão, Rio’s Deputy Governor, told reporters that a new police base would open nearby in May.



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Brazil

Brazil: Carneval, Crime, Corruption, and the Coming Olympics

Dutch tourist shot in Carnival mugging in Rio: police


Feb 13, 2010
05:53 PM US/Eastern
Agence France Presse


A 37-year-old Dutch tourist was in hospital in Rio de Janeiro Saturday after being shot twice by a mugger who attacked him and his wife during Carnival festivities, police told AFP.

"This is the worst crime we have had against a foreign tourist this year and we are worried about it," the head of the special tourist police unit handling the assault, Gilbert Stivanello, said.

The Dutchman, identified as Alexander Kors Johannes Vervoort, was shot in the stomach and arm during the assault late Friday. He remained in intensive care, though was conscious.

The crime occurred as Vervoort and his wife, Ella Vervoort Ferwerda, were walking alone to the summit of a hill where Rio's landmark giant Christ the Redeemer statue is located. The popular tourist spot attracts 1.8 million visitors a year.

The wife, also 37, was beaten about the head with a pistol but was not badly hurt.

The single mugger, described as a very young and small man, ran from the scene, leaving behind the camera, wallet, backpack and handbag he had been trying to steal.

Police were hunting him.

The police chief said the man also risked being murdered by the drug gang which runs the slum where he lives, near the Christ statue, for bringing officers into their lawless neighborhood.

Stivenello corrected an initial Brazilian news report by the O Globo newspaper that said two muggers were involved, and which gave incomplete names for the victims.

The police chief said the attack was the most serious against a foreigner so far during Carnival.

"Usually, there are fewer assaults but more thefts," including pickpocketing, reported during the festivities, which began Friday and continue well into next week.

Stivanello said he did not yet have statistics on tourist crimes reported to his unit for the first two days of Carnival.

A dozen other tourists, mostly young British backpackers, were at the reception of the tourist police office when AFP visited. All were there to file reports that they, too, had been mugged, though none had been hurt.

"I was mugged twice the same night," said one, Ed Grissell, 18.

He explained that two thugs had yanked away his digital camera he had been using. Minutes later, a larger group returned to also grab at knifepoint a friend's digital camera he was holding.

Sarah Fellows, 22, said she and a friend were seized by two men in a dark street as they were walking back to their lodging after a night in the same area, Lapa, a downtown area filled with bars and nightclubs.

"They cornered us. They made me give my handbag, which had my camera and 50 reais (30 dollars) in it," she said.

She said she pleaded with the muggers to leave her make-up, which they did.

Brazilian officials warn victims of assaults not to put up any resistance or speak back during assaults because many assailants are armed and have no hesitation in using their weapons.

Rio, which is to host the 2016 Olympic Games, has endemic street crime.

The state of Rio de Janeiro had 5,794 murders last year, a rise of 1.3 percent, while the number of muggings increased by two percent.




We need to keep it all in perspective though.  One bad story doesn't a trend make nor is it any more alarming than the US crime rates.  In 2007, there were over 11,376,000 crimes committed in the US reported to the police.  11 million.  That is a bit inclusive - every crime from burglary to assult, rape, to murder, fraud to car theft.   There were, the same year, over 1,424,000 serious crimes committed in the US (rape, murder, robbery, aggravated assult).  Narrowing the window a bit more, there were approximately 18,300 murders in the US in 2007.  By 2008, the number was 16,470 give or take - a drop from the year before, and an ongoing decrease since 2001.
 
Therefore, compare the 5,794 murders in the state of Rio with the 16,470 murders in the United States.  That would be a better comparison than considering the overall crime rate.
 
Oh, wait ... the 5,794 murders were in one state.  Brazil has more than 25 states, although I am quite sure they are not all as bad as Rio.  After all, Brazil only has 193,000,000 people - it should certain ly have a much lower murder rate.  It is nearly half the size of the US population.
 
Unfortunately, that is not the case.  According to two different sources "Uma vitória sobre o crime". Revista Epoca. http://revistaepoca.globo.com/Revista/Epoca/0,EDG81450-6009-507,00-UMA+VITORIA+SOBRE+O+CRIME.html  and  "Mapa da violência Brasil 2008" (in Portuguese) (PDF). Organização dos estados Ibero-Amricanos para a educação, Ciência e cultura.. http://www.ritla.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2314&Itemid=147, there are approximately 48,000 murders in Brazil (2008), and that would be the ones we know about.
 
On a positive note - the Olympics will the defining moment for Brazil.  An opportunity to showcase the country and the people. 

Concerns like this in Brazil, or in Mexico, are usually dismissed by frequent travellers to those countries.  I suppose it is very much like the Wildebeest.  They travel in groups as small as 25-30, and herds as large as several thousand.  You would figure, given their range and habitat - from  Botswana to South Africa, the Tanzanian Serengeti equatorial plain, and throughout Zambia - that they would be easy pickings for every predator on the Serengeti ... and they are, except they travel in herds and even when the lions take one out for lunch, the others flee and among a herd of several thousand, you never notice the loss of one.  That, unfortunately, is the attitude some people have toward crimes in Brazil or Mexico.  They gamble.

The wildebeest, meanwhile, is lunch and dinner for the pride, and the remains become snacks for whatever other lesser predators may be about, waiting and watching for an opportunity to jump in and grab some meat.



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
brazil

Rio and Lula: LOTS of WORK to do before the Olympics and Scorecard So Far isn't Promising

Lula has a LOT OF WORK to do in the next six or so years and at this rate ...



Helicopter downed in Rio violence; two police dead


17 Oct 2009

Source: Reuters

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Suspected drug traffickers shot down a police helicopter and set fire to five buses and a school in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday, killing two policemen, police and media said.

It is one of the worst recent outbreaks of violence in Rio and comes two weeks after the city was awarded the 2016 Olympic Games, despite worries over its high levels of violence and poor security.

Traffickers set fire to the buses in response to a police operation against them, the O Globo network said on its website, which showed pictures of the destroyed helicopter and buses on fire. It reported that three suspected criminals were also killed.

"The helicopter was hit by criminals and the pilot made a forced landing on a football pitch," Major Oderlei Santos of the military police told Reuters.

The helicopter had been carrying six police officers as part of an operation in one of Rio's hundreds of slums, which are dominated by heavily armed drug gangs, police said.

They said the helicopter exploded after it landed and that the four surviving officers were wounded, suffering from burns.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
rio
 

What a shame it wasn't Chicago. Not.

Silly Obama - you don't choose a city for diversity.  Please, what sort of diversity is there in Beijing?  Seoul?  ha, not very much.  You choose a city based on the ability to put on a world class game, to showcase the best in sports, and people - not some propaganda effort at diversity.

It is not about our Visa requirements - Brazil has a reciprocal program - so any country that doesn't demand of brazil anything, will not be demanded upon - great.  Al Qaida will never attack Brasil.  It has attacked Madrid, it would have used the Olympics as a means of getting large numbers of its followers into the US ... so great, let someone else handle it.  It is not about ill-will toward the US (all Bush's fault).  It is about sharing - the Olympics have been held in Russia, in China, in Korea, in the US, England, Greece ... they have never been held in South America. 

I suspect France, Spain, and Japan will compete in the next 20 years and should win - after which, the US should push again, with a united USOC Committee, and a strong push by all sectors in US sports.


On the other hand, a great day for the Brasilian people, for the IOC, for the government of Brasil, and the people of South America ... can celebrate this opportunity.


Now ... we wait, and in 2016, we can watch the process unfold, and witness the execution by Brazil of the Olympic games, and decide ...





shame

China: Gold Medal Winnters

“Here the message is clear; you’ve got to win,” said China’s fencing coach Christian Bauer, a Frenchman, in an interview last week with the French newspaper L’Equipe. “When you’ve got a gold medal here, you’re somebody. When you have a silver, you’re not.”


51 at this games.

****************************


Understandably, everyone wants a gold. That is not the point nor the issue. The point is, the Chinese REALLY do not count you if you won a SILVER or BRONZE. You will ONLY count if you have the GOLD.

The way they conduct themselves. Winning is everything and the winners receive the prize - the 2nd and 3rd place losers may as well find something else to do.

China will not honor them all - just the GOLD winners.


Keep this in mind for EVERYTHING else.






Olympics





China

Sex and the Olympics

From The Times




August 22, 2008

Sex and the Olympic city

Tomorrow night (Friday, August 22) thousands of young men and women with the most fit, toned bodies in the world will mingle for the last time before they fly home. What might they get up to?

by Matthew Syed

I am often asked if the Olympic village - the vast restaurant and housing conglomeration that hosts the world's top athletes for the duration of the Games - is the sex-fest it is cracked up to be. My answer is always the same: too right it is. I played my first Games in Barcelona in 1992 and got laid more often in those two and a half weeks than in the rest of my life up to that point. That is to say twice, which may not sound a lot, but for a 21-year-old undergraduate with crooked teeth, it was a minor miracle.

Barcelona was, for many of us Olympic virgins, as much about sex as it was about sport. There were the gorgeous hostesses - there to assist the athletes - in their bright yellow shirts and black skirts; there were the indigenous lovelies who came to watch the competitions. And then there were the female athletes - literally thousands of them - strutting, shimmying, sashaying and jogging around the village, clad in Lycra and exposing yard upon yard of shiny, toned, rippling and unimaginably exotic flesh. Women from all the countries of the world: muscular, virile, athletic and oozing oestrogen. I spent so much time in a state of lust that I could have passed out. Indeed, for all I knew I did pass out - in a place like that how was one to tell the difference between dreamland and reality?

It was not just the guys. The women, too, seemed in thrall to their hormones, throwing around daring glances and dynamite smiles like confetti. No meal or coffee break was complete without a breathless conversation with a lithe long jumper from Cuba or an Amazonian badminton player from Sweden, the mutual longing so evident it was almost comical. It was an effort of will to keep everything in check until competition had finished. But, once we were eliminated from our respective competitions, we lunged at each other like suicidal fencers. There may have been a fair amount of gay sex going on, too - but given the notorious homophobia in sport it was rather more covert.

This sex fest was not limited to Barcelona: the same thing happened in Sydney in 2000, my second Olympics as an athlete, and is happening right here in Beijing, where this time I'm a commentator. I spoke to an Aussie table tennis player this week to check out the village vibe and he launched into the breathless patter common to any Olympic debutant: “It is unbelievable in there; everyone is totally crazy once they are out of their competitions. God knows what it is going to be like this weekend. It is like a world within a world.” A British runner (anonymous again: athletes are not supposed to talk to journalists unaccompanied by a PR type, least of all about sex) said: “The swimmers finished earlier in the week and it was like there was an eruption.”

Ah yes, the swimmers. For some reason the International Olympic Committee insists on bunching the swimming events towards the beginning of the Games with the inevitable consequence that the aquatics folk get going earlier - sexually I mean - than everyone else. So much so that, at the outset of the Sydney Olympics, Jonathan Edwards, a Christian and triple jumper extraordinaire, caused a ripple by telling them publicly to keep a lid on it. Edwards was simply concerned about getting woken up by creaking floorboards, but given his biblical credentials, it became a story about morality. Not that his intervention made a blind bit of difference. There is a famous story from Seoul in 1988 that there were so many used condoms on the roof terrace of the British team's residential block the night after the swimming concluded that the British Olympic Association sent out an edict banning outdoor sex. Here in Beijing, organisers have realised that such prohibitions are about as useful as banning breathing and have, instead, handed out thousands of free condoms to the athletes. If you can't stop 'em, at least make it safe.

Which all begs a question, or possibly many questions. First, and most importantly, how can one get access to the village? The bad news is that you can't, unless, of course, you happen to be an athlete with the relevant accreditation. But secondly, where does this furnace of sexual energy come from? Or, to put it another way, why do sportsmen and women have such explosive libidos? I am not implying, for one moment, that every athlete in Beijing is at it. Just that 99 per cent of them are.

Before we get to that, however, it is worth noting an intriguing dichotomy between the sexes in respect of all this coupling. The chaps who win gold medals - even those as geeky as Michael Phelps - are the principal objects of desire for many female athletes. There is something about sporting success that makes a certain type of woman go crazy - smiling, flirting and sometimes even grabbing at the chaps who have done the business in the pool or on the track. An Olympic gold medal is not merely a route to fame and fortune; it is also a surefire ticket to writhe.

But - and this is the thing - success does not work both ways. Gold-medal winning female athletes are not looked upon by male athletes with any more desire than those who flunked out in the first round. It is sometimes even considered a defect, as if there is something downright unfeminine about all that striving, fist pumping and incontinent sweating. Sport, in this respect, is a reflection of wider society, where male success is a universal desirable whereas female success is sexually ambiguous. I do not condone this phenomenon, merely note it. Not all athletes are finely tuned specimens of perfect physical health, of course. A fair number are smokers, not prepared to give up despite the nagging of coaches and physiologists. At Barcelona, there was an area where the puffers would congregate near the transport mall. At the table tennis events in Beijing, a male player from Serbia and another from Greece have often been out catching a drag during breaks in play.

But let us get back to all the sex going down in the village. One possible explanation centres on the fact that Olympic athletes have to display an unnatural (and, it has to be said, wholly unhealthy) level of self-discipline in the build-up to big competitions. How else is this going to manifest itself than with a volcanic release of pent-up hedonism? It is a common sight to see recently knocked-out athletes gorging on Magnums and McDonald's, swilling alcohol and, of course, shagging like crazy. Sometimes all three at the same time. Yet this can be only a part of the explanation because most of the athletes I know are as up for it before and during competition as they are in the immediate aftermath. It is as if sportsmen and women have a higher base level of sexual energy. But why? Can it be that one of the underlying drivers of sporting greatness is also the very thing that produces an overactive sex drive?

If so, you can bet your Olympic accreditation that testosterone is implicated. Testosterone is the hormone responsible for many of the differences between the sexes and is also a key physiological driver of aggression, competitiveness and virility. This is particularly so with regard to women. The duel effect of testosterone on female sporting performance and sexuality was demonstrated - somewhat sinisterly - during the state-sponsored doping programme in East Germany. An average teenage girl produces around half a milligram of testosterone per day. In the mid-1980s German female athletes were doped with around 30 milligrams of androgenic steroids per day. The effect on sporting performance was breathtaking - East German women dominated the world in swimming and athletics - but it also produced libidos (according to the testimony of the athletes themselves) that spiraled out of control.

This is not to say that the athletes in the village are all on steroids, or that elevated levels of testosterone inevitably lead to lots of sex. It is merely to say that, at a population level, higher naturally occurring levels of testosterone in both genders would provide a powerful explanation for the combination of sporting prowess and sexual potency.

I also think it is significant that, for most athletes, the village is thousands of miles from home. The old “what goes on tour stays on tour” mantra is still alive and kicking, not just in sport but beyond. There is something deepseated in humanity that leads us to play by different rules whenever we leave town, a phenomenon that has caused instances of terrible inhumanity. When it comes to sex, it simply means that those in relationships no longer recognise, or at least ignore, the boundaries of fidelity and honesty that underpin human monogamy. Philosophers call it moral relativism; the rest of us call it hypocrisy.

There is also a Darwinian component to this. Scientists have measured, for example, how male fertility varies with distance from one's habitual partner. And guess what? According to a report in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, a man's sperm count doubles when he spends a lot of time on the road - up from 389 million sperm per ejaculate to 712 million. Which, I am sure you will agree, is a lot of extra sperm.

I suggest that it is the coming together (if you will forgive the expression) of these factors that creates such an explosive sexual cocktail within the security-controlled perimeter of the Olympic village. Not that this is a bad thing. I have always regarded sexual promiscuity - for a single person at least - as a basic human right, even if it is no panacea for happiness or, indeed, anything else. Of course, many athletes will abstain, others may even disapprove. Only one thing is certain: they will never again enter a place quite like the Olympic village. Not, at least, until London 2012.





sex



olympics

China - Olympics.

"I have experienced in the past the great pressure that government officials exert on the athletes as well as the coach, and that they demand a gold medal, otherwise it is meaningless. Liu Xiang is still a young boy and he has been put under a bit too much expectation."

Liu, 25, the son of a Shanghai truck driver, was a bright schoolboy until he was picked out at the age of nine as a potential athlete by Mr Gu, his school coach, initially as a high jumper.

And this is what the world hoped would compete against the US militarily. A system that swallows its children, marches upon the young, and pushes the youth beyond the boundaries of reason and common expectation.

Such shame. For China, and the fools who thought so.






China






Olympics

China - More revelations

Chao Chanqing, an exiled journalist widely read on web-sites accessible in China, has accused Zhang, the director, of playing the same role as Leni Riefenstahl, who filmed an epic documentary for Hitler at the Berlin Olympics of 1936.

The director scorns the comparison but he admitted that a Chinese leader ordered him to make changes to the ceremony. “I had no chance to reject his opinion,” he told the Nanfang Weekend newspaper. Analysts said he was referring to vice-president Xi Jinping, heir apparent to the top job.

Government officials swept thousands of migrant workers out of Beijing – the very people who built the stadium, at least 10 of them paying with their lives. Police arrested hundreds of provincial petitioners who sought justice in the capital and sent at least 58 to labour camps for “reeducation”.

The sick were told that routine surgery was cancelled in every hospital and officials shut some psychiatric patients inside their wards.


***************************************

Makes perfect sense - the view many people hold, across the globe - that they would like to see China equal the US militarily.

Then you could multiply the above by 1000 and that would be a start.


Simple stupid people. Too damned many of them.





China

China - Air Quality

Air target missed
A day before the Games, a BBC reading suggested Beijing's air quality was far below World Health Organization (WHO) standards.

It put levels of particulate matter (PM10) at 191 micrograms per cubic metre. This far exceeds the WHO target of 50 micrograms/cubic metre, and also exceeds the WHO target for developing countries of 150 micrograms/cubic metre.





But Mr Rogge praised the Chinese authorities for having done "everything that is feasible and humanly possible to address this situation".

"What they have done is extraordinary," Mr Rogge told reporters.

He said there was "absolutely no danger" to the health of athletes taking part in events that last less than one hour. But he said if the pollution was bad, events which lasted more than that could be shifted or postponed.

Mr Rogge urged reporters to distinguish between fog and pollution - a point, correspondents say, often made by Chinese authorities.

"The fog, you see, is based on the basis of humidity and heat. It does not mean that this fog is the same as pollution," he said.

[So - fog and pollution is not the same as smog or pollution. Fog is better for you.]

He also said that China's efforts to clean up the air around Beijing would "continue and have a lasting influence on the climate of Beijing".

Separately, Mr Rogge said athletes would be prevented from making any political statement or protest in official venues - in accordance with Rule 51 of the Olympic charter, which forbids athletes from making political, religious, commercial or racial propaganda.

But he said they were free to do this in protest areas provided by Chinese authorities, and that "common sense" would be used to judge violations.

He spoke after more than 40 Olympic athletes signed an open letter to President Hu Jintao urging China to respect freedom of opinion and religion, particularly in Tibet.

The letter urged China "to protect freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of opinion in your country, including Tibet".

[to read the rest of the BBC article, click on the title link]


But it's ok, they are just beginning to industrialize and since everyone else who industrialized made pollution, its ok they do the same because everyone else did!

Yeah.





pollution

China - Crackdown on Opposition, within the US! San Francisco.

Gwyneth ... your plight, I mean your video - all Americans abroad should vote, because that is our right. I agree. I agree that as Americans we possess certain rights, unique and radically different from most of the world. While you champion our rights, that we as Americans possess, you are, and should be honest, in saying what you implicitly argue - we are special.

Yet then why does the left so wish to denigrate the greatness of America and make us, no different than any other nation. No different than Australia or Canada, or Japan, not morally superior to France or China ....



Woman Falls From SF Chinese Consulate

NBC[Thursday, August 07, 2008 07:31]

SAN FRANCISCO -- Another protest against the Beijing Summer Olympics attracted attention in San Francisco on Tuesday after a demonstrator fell two stories from the façade of the Chinese Consulate building in the city. She was taken to San Francisco General Hospital.San Francisco police are investigating whether a woman, who was climbing the building to protest China's human rights record in Tibet, fell because her rope failed or because someone cut it.

The woman, Nyendak Wangden, was dangling near the roof when she fell to a patio. She is a member of the group "Students For A Free Tibet," the same group that hoisted a giant sign on the Golden Gate Bridge earlier this year.

The protest unfolded slowly, NBC Bay Area's Lisa Bernard reported. The woman swung over a wall from the roof while three women chained themselves to the ornamental lions at the entrance to the consulate, Bernard reported. There were about two dozen protesters on the scene in all.

A friend of the protester, Brianna Morgan, stood nearby to support her body, Bernard said.

There Wangden dangled for 20 minutes, holding a sign with a message for China. Police arrived as Chinese representatives looked anxious, Bernard said.Two women dressed in black staged mock hangings from the roof of the building, holding banners that said, "Stop the Killing in Tibet" while other protesters from the group and the Tibetan Youth Congress waved signs.

Then came a scream and a thud as the woman dropped 20 feet, from the top floor to a balcony on the second floor, Bernard said. The experience was horrifying for friends who saw it, Bernard said.

NBC Bay Area also showed video taken by a tourist in a hotel room across the street.

The video showed Morgan being pushed moments before she dropped, Bernard said."We were here for a nonviolent protest," said Tenzin Khando, 22, of Salt Lake City, one of the protesters.

"It is supposed to be nonviolent because the Chinese are using the Olympics as propaganda. This is what's happening in front of our eyes. Imagine what's happening behind closed doors."

She wiped away tears as she watched firefighters load Wangden into one of their trucks.

Fire crews used a ladder and a stretcher to bring the woman down from the second floor balcony.

The stretcher was a precaution in case the woman's spine or neck had been damaged, fire Lt. Mindy Talmadge said.

[to read the rest of the article, click on the title link]

China - the last warning? Terrorism

In a previous post, I mentioned WARNINGS and the need to warn

Olympics, China, and Islamo-Fascists


If I am correct, there has already been a warning that was not reported or ignored, OR one more warning is coming.

I tend to think this is the third warning due to the nature of the video and the finality of the statement. Differs from the rest.

I believe this issue - how China deals with al qaida (the term is used as an umbrella for all extremist Islamo-fascist groups) will be interesting to watch.

At the moment, all eyes are turned on China as the oppressive actions of the communist government of China, make any subjugation throughout history pale in comparison. China is being regarded as a human rights violator bar none. To switch focus and divert attention, it may suit the purposes of the Chinese government to allow an event to occur.

By doing so, all attention is off the most repressive regime on earth, and on al qaida. Al qaida will not deny it because they would have done it, with the blind eye of the Chinese government. It would divert all attention from the most repressive regime on earth and the most polluted cities on earth, onto al qaida - the most reviled group on earth. It would thrust China into the US net of friends combating terrorism, and would allow an excuse for the Chinese to clamp down even harder on dissidents and anyone - from Tibetans to the Muslims, and along the way, kill off al qaida.

For the Chinese - well within their usual and normal operating procedures. While the humiliation at being unable to stop al qaida would show weakness, the loss of honor would be restored quickly as the Chinese send their million man army to annihilate opposition throughout China, with the token al qaida head presented along the way as proof they are searching for Islamo-fascists.

It is possible the Chinese will stop the attack, but, like US efforts, there is no guarantee.


In any event - the most recent video warning -



Chinese Islamists threaten Olympics: US group

Aug 7 01:17 PM US/Eastern

A Muslim separatist group in China has made a new video threat against the Beijing Olympics, warning Muslims to keep their children away from the games, a US group that monitors extremists said Thursday.

The nearly six-minute video shows flames consuming a Beijing Olympics logo and an explosion over a venue for the competition, and features a masked, turbaned speaker clutching what appears to be an assault rifle.

The IntelCenter released a copy of the recording, attributed to the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), an ethnic Uighur and Muslim organization seeking to create an independent state out of China's heavily Muslim Xinjiang province.

The SITE Intelligence Group, meanwhile, translated some of the message, which was delivered in the language of the Uighurs, and said that the speaker identified himself as a TIP member and issued a threat against the Games.

The speaker urges Muslims to keep their children from the competition, and warns "Do not stay on the same bus, on the same train, on the same plane, in the same buildings, or any place the Chinese are," SITE said.

In July, the Washington-based IntelCenter said TIP had taken credit in another video statement for a deadly bus bombing in Shanghai in May and warned of new attacks in China during the Olympics.

In that recording, Commander Seyfullah of TIP claimed credit for several attacks, including the May 5 Shanghai bus bombing which killed three; another Shanghai attack; an attack on police in Wenzhou on July 17 using an explosives-laden tractor; a bombing of a Guangzhou plastic factory on July 17; and bombings of three buses in Yunnan province on July 21.

Three people were killed as a result of the explosion on the crowded bus in Shanghai on May 5, police and witnesses said.

The incident during the morning traffic rush hour in northwest Shanghai also injured 12 people.

At the time, authorities attributed the blast to flammable materials carried by a passenger.

But Seyfullah said the blast was the work of his group, and warned of more explosions to come.

According to global intelligence analysts Stratfor, the Turkestan Islamic Party is another name used by the Islamic Party of East Turkestan (ETIM), an ethnic Uighur and Muslim separatist group seeking to create an independent state out of China's westernmost, heavily Muslim Xinjiang province.

The United States, China and other countries have designated ETIM a terrorist group.

Beijing is wary of ethnic Uighur Muslims living in Xinjiang, who maintain an ethnic identity distinct from the Chinese and have struggled to re-establish the independent state of East Turkestan since their homeland became part of China in 1955.

[Human] Rights bodies say the Chinese government is cracking down on them, under the pretext of fighting terrorism.









China



terrorism



al qaida