More watched Obama than Olympic opening

This claim, that more people watched Obama’s acceptance speech than the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, repeated ad nauseum at Democratic blogs, isn’t quite true, and IS quite parochial in an ellipsis.

More Americans indeed watched Obama, but, we’re less than 5 percent of the world’s population, and only about 10 percent of the world’s TV-watching population.

Beijing hopes for a rainy day

In fact, China is trying to create more rainy days. The countryside could use rain as rain, of course, but the capital wants it as an “air shower” to scrub pollution.

Meanwhile, at least in the Sierras and Intermountain West, U.S. pollution (hello, California) seems to reduce rainfall.

Beijing – ‘it’s only mist’

Yeah, President Hu Jintao, tell a marathoner in another week that the soup in Beijing called air is only mist.

Actually, it’s not any Chinese government or Communist Party official claiming that.

It’s Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IOC's medical commission.

Read on and see if you agree.

Tiananmen Square — 19 years ago

Since it’s already June 4 in Beijing, it’s well worth reflecting on the Tiananmen Square anniversary, with the Olympics less than two months away.

Arguably, the dichotomy of modern, Deng and post-Deng China, started on this date. The peasant/urbanite and still-poor/middle class dichotomy. The capitalism/repression dichotomy, despite the claims of both fiscal conservatives and Democratic Leadership Council neoliberals aside, that American financial “involvement” will not change from outside.

In his new book, “The Empire of Lies,” a refutation to both fiscal conservatives and neoliberals, French intellectual Guy Sorman notes that soon after Tiananmen, he didn’t expect outrage over it to last. The almighty dollar, france and deutschemark of those days, the latter two now replaced by the euro, overwhelmed human rights issues.

After all, that’s why the Olympics are in Beijing this year after all, isn’t it? A chance for major sporting goods companies and other businesses to expand their Chinese markets? The currency of return is not just paying for marketing and advertising rights, but some political whitewash for the Communist Party.

Sorman’s book (I’ll have a review later this week) notes other hypocrisies, such as Chinese immediate admission to the WTO, despite being more repressive in many ways than Russia.

He also, contrary to neoliberals such as Atlantic’s James Fallows, doesn’t expect American engagement in particular, nor a tidal force of capitalism in general, to work some sort of inexorable magic on China, either politically to drive it toward democracy, or socially to address the rich/poor and urban/peasant gaps that continue to grow.

Hypocrisy alert – IOC head disses boycott of Beijing opening

Showing he can lie almost as well as his predecessor, Juan Antonio Samaranch, who gave us, no, forced upon us, the Beijing Olympics for political and hypercapitalist reasons, International Olympic Committee Chairman Jacques Rogge claims a political boycott of any part of the Beijing Olympic Games would only hurt athletes.

“A boycott would hurt the athletes, but not the Games. I am sure many athletes would regret the absence of their political leaders when they parade,” he said. “But what I would say, is ‘wait and see.’”

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Yes, if I’m an Olympic athlete, I’m going to miserably fail in my event because my president or prime minister isn’t on a reviewing stand for me to take a walk around a track. Does Rogge actually believe this crap?

That was followed by this whopper:

“Public opinion around the world does not want any boycotts. The Olympic Games is about the athletes themselves and the athletes are innocent.”

Guess you haven’t been reading the newspaper or the Internet this week, Mr. Rogge, or else your definition of either “public opinion” or “world” is something brand new.

In the latest factual counter-offering to Rogge’s fantasy world, the European Parliament has called on European Union members to boycott opening ceremonies.

News briefs – Obama riffs on Coz, Olympic torch and opening boycott, Benedict calls out Bush

Barack Obama plays Bill Cosby

No, he’s not wearing a sweater, but in black-majority high schools, Obama is preaching much the same message — challenging parents to get involved with their kids’ education rather than dissing schools, and kids to put down the video games.

Olympic torch relay is still on

But, the rest of its international appearances, a la the San Francisco run, are going to be cut short. And, when International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge called on China to respect its “moral engagement” toward improving human rights, Jiang Yu from the Chinese Foreign Ministry politely told him to STFU.

Growing boycott of Games opening is also on

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is now questioning out loud whether or not he will attend the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. Preznit Bush is gonna look awfully lonely up there on that big reviewing stand. Of course, Ban is taking the Gordon Brown route on this. Just as the British Prime Minister claims he always planned to only attend the closing ceremony, Ban says he plans a “substantive visit” to China at some other time this year.

Pope Benedict – might does not make right

That’s the message Pope Benedict XVI will give the U.N.. But Preznit George (the Last, we hope) will continue to stick his fingers in his ears and say, “Nyaah, nyaah.”

Pander alert AND hypocrisy alert – Obama silent on Olympics for Chicago

Barack Obama, like Hillary Clinton, hits the Daily Double on the politics of non-change today.

Clinton actually has a leg up on one progressive stance vs. Obama. She has called for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony and he hasn’t.

And why not, pray tell?

Chicago hopes to get the 2016 Olympics. And, one of Obama’s top campaign advisors and close friends, Valerie Jarrett, is the vice chair of Chicago’s bid committee.

First major-country Olympics opening boycott

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced she will not attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Given that France’s foreign minister already called for such a boycott last week, the ball could start rolling pretty quickly in Europe:

As pressure built for concerted western protests to China over the crackdown in Tibet, EU leaders prepared to discuss the crisis for the first time today, amid a rift over whether to boycott the Olympics.

The disclosure that Germany is to stay away from the games’ opening ceremonies in August could encourage President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to join in a gesture of defiance and complicate Gordon Brown’s determination to attend the Olympics.

Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, became the first EU head of government to announce a boycott on Thursday and he was promptly joined by President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, who had previously promised to travel to Beijing.

Of course, our Preznit will certainly show up, if for no other reason than the hundreds of billions of dollars we owe Chinese creditors, as well as to beg Beijing to revalue its currency. And Chinese leaders will hail the appearance of the alleged “leader of the free world” as an imprimatur of Olympic success.

And, if Gordon Brown wants to replace Tony Blair as Bush’s lapdog, I’m sure Labor will take a closer look at him, too.

Olympic opening ceremony boycott idea could grow

French Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher suggests a boycott of the Olympic opening ceremony may be in order if China continues its crackdown in Tibet.

BOOM!

This is one of those ideas that makes total sense.

The opening ceremony is quasi-political. The only thing that theoretically relates to the Olympic Games themselves is the lighting of the torch, and even that can have political overtones.

An opening ceremony boycott would in no way politicize the events themselves.

Olympic boycott of a sort under discussion

French Foreign Minister Bernard Koucher suggests a boycott of the Olympic opening ceremony may be in order if China continues its crackdown in Tibet.

BOOM!

This is one of those ideas that makes total sense.

The opening ceremony is quasi-political. The only thing that theoretically relates to the Olympic Games themselves is the lighting of the torch, and even that can have political overtones.

An opening ceremony boycott would in no way politicize the events themselves.

China goes for repression daily double – possible Olympic fallout

Besides shooting protestors in Lhasa, Tibet, Beijing tried to “protect” Dodgers pitcher Chan Ho Park from autograph seekers during Major League Baseball’s first foray into China.

Well, the Olympics ought to be fun. The British Olympic Committee has backed off an attempt to censor its own athletes’ criticizing China in the run-up to this summer — protests that have more fuel on the fire after this weekend; many athletes from around the world, especially distance runners, are so skeptical of Beijing cleaning up its air pollution that they’re talking about wearing surgical masks; and now, China tries to block an athlete from his own fans.

Of course, Beijing is internally censoring outside news reports on Tibet. Chan Ho Park, or international athletes’ protests during the Beijing games, won’t fare any better.

No pictures will be shown of athletes wearing black armbands in support of Tibet, or wearing surgical masks in support of healthy lungs. President Bush will not be shown allegedly “criticizing” Chinese President Hu Jintao on civil liberties.

Dust storms will not be shown swirling from the west into Beijing. Chinese citizens having to hunt for water because there is none after the Olympic Village uses its massive demands will also not be shown.

Bush to Beijing equals FDR to Berlin?

That’s the take of Congressman Frank Wolf, who wants to pass a federal law prohibiting the spending of federal money for U.S. officials to go to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing

Wolf’s bill is clearly aimed at President George W. Bush’s planned attendance. Wolf, citing China’s human rights record, said it would be like Franklin D. Roosevelt going to the Adolf Hitler-orchestrated 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

Actually, I was hoping Bush would go — and get lost over there.

That said, more seriously, I think Wolf has a point. And any human rights criticism Bush says he will direct at Chinese leader Hu Jintao will be indirect, muted and private; in other words, it could be done without Bush ever going to China.

Can we bring our own air, too?

China officially “regrets” that the U.S. Olympic Team is bringing its own food supply to Beijing this summer. Well, given all the scandals of recent months, from pet food tainted with a plasticizing compound to toys swathed in lead paint, what do they expect?

(Also, some athletes worry that the amount of growth-boosting drugs used on Chinese livestock could produce positive doping tests.)

The heck with that — what’s Beijing smog, even with any short-term Chinese clean-up, going to do to a marathoner’s lungs?