The International Olympic Committee is staffed by a bunch of spineless twits. China should not have even been allowed to host the games, given their all around villainy (Gold Medal there). It is disgusting to see them be allowed to host an international event that is a token of international cooperation. Beijing is barbaric, and I feel very sad for the billion plus people subdued by its tyranny. And we, the country that touts freedom, participate in the spectacular farce. Guess its only logical since our policy makers turn a blind eye in so many other ways.

Maybe because the massacre did not take place in Tiananmen. Not one person is known to have been killed there. Try a couple of blocks down the way at Xidan. It was a bloodbath there (both protesters and soldiers being killed).

But that is where the protest occurred. The killing just took place elsewhere. Move the people out of sight then murder them. Typical Marxist modis operandi.

They sealed off Baoding province, kinda like the IUC tried to seal off the Chaicago Annenberg challenge papers….

The only difference is that IUC will only be able to sanitize the records, instead of disappear them completely-like much of Glibama’s paper trail!

Besides, you must be lying anyway….NBC didn’t mention this alleged injustice by the amazing, utopian, Chinese government……

RACISTS!!!

- The Cat

That’s the lure of collectivism: a giant pyramid is easy to see. The thousands of slaves buried under it are out of sight and out of mind.

logis on August 25, 2008 at 12:32 PM

Yep.

A candidate who’s all image is naturally going to be impressed with images, even from a totalitarian regime…
jon1979 on August 25, 2008 at 9:37 AM

Small-minded people are only impressed by Really Big Things.

That’s the lure of collectivism: a giant pyramid is easy to see. The thousands of slaves buried under it are out of sight and out of mind.

p40tiger on August 25, 2008 at 10:58 AM

Thanks for the correction; it only proves my point. While NBC glazed our eyes over with offical approved oratory the real story sat there, an elephant in the room that no announcer dared to touch.

YiZhangZhe on August 25, 2008 at 11:56 AM

Exactly right. China is a land of condradictions living side by side. That is why someone can be so certain about something in China, and be completely right and wrong at the same time. Any generalization about China is doomed to be simplistic.

When it became apparent that tourists had decided to skip the 2008 Olympics over the Tibet issue, or just because of the Chinese government in general, the need for the water evaporated.

I’ve been a regular reader of Mr. Morrissey for a long time now. I’ve always admired his pragmatism, insight, and clear writing style. But… that wordplay….

China has the Shanghai Maglev, a truly impressive piece of infrastructure. China is also enthusiastically and swiftly constructing new infrastructure, some of it very impressive, some of it less so. However China is also a land of construction projects that have been ‘almost finished’ ever since they were put into use: half-built roads, inadequate plumbing and countless other demonstrations of incompetence.

Whether China is an example of modernity or backwardness, whether it exemplifies excellence or incompetence, depends very much which way you are facing at the time. To find examples of each extreme adjacent to one another, a footstep or two apart, is so common as to be unremarkable.

The city was also under constant construction; road crews worked on three different locations in the week I was there. It was dusty and dirty; I felt many times like I was walking the set of a gritty noir movie. And the smell! If you’ve ever been around a papermill — that’s what it smelled like. The. whole. city. It just seemed shrouded in gunk.

Going out to dinner was also an interesting experience. When reading Lee’s blog, it was mentioned that “smoking is a national vice.” I didn’t really understand this comment until we went out for our anniversary. The Chinese occupants of the restaurant smoked like freight trains: They had a cigarette lit almost the entire time they were there, and so the air was a bit hazy indoors as well!

And then there was the internet access. We stayed at a Western hotel in Shanghai with free wireless access. While I could access Michelle’s blog, Hot Air, and a few others, most of my morning reads were off-limits. I was constantly redirected to a crappy search engine page, providing me with “similar items.”

Once we returned, my husband and his best friend made an interesting observation: China is like the US in the 1950s, only with modern technology. I think this is pretty accurate. My only disagreement would be to say that it’s more like the Industrial Revolution meets the Atomic Age with Modern Technology. All they need are billboards advertising Chesterfields…

What really galled me was listening to the NBC crew as the cyclists and the marathon runners went around Tiananmen Square and giving the Chinese official version, never mentioning the massacre.
itsspideyman on August 25, 2008 at 10:38 AM

Maybe because the massacre did not take place in Tiananmen. Not one person is known to have been killed there. Try a couple of blocks down the way at Xidan. It was a bloodbath there (both protesters and soldiers being killed).

Instead what we saw was the old China with a new coat of paint, whether it was using underage athletes and covering the tracks when they were found out, or arresting citizens when they filed for the right to officially protest.

What really galled me was listening to the NBC crew as the cyclists and the marathon runners went around Tiananmen Square and giving the Chinese official version, never mentioning the massacre.

Liars need one thing in order to survive, someone who believes them. Which one of our presidental candidates more completely fills that definition?

p40tiger on August 25, 2008 at 10:18 AM

It was reported on ABC radio by their reporter covering the Olympics. If you wish to verify it, you’ll have to do your own homework.