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Athletes sacrificed dearly -- one was separated from her toddler, one was banned from eating dinner, one missed a parent's funeral. While Americans spoke of fun, the Chinese were on a 'sacred mission.' If anybody feels a pang of jealousy over China's haul of Olympic gold medals, they need only pause to consider what the athletes went through to get them. The only mother on China's team, Xian Dongmei, told reporters after she won her gold medal in judo that she had not seen her 18-month-old daughter in one year, monitoring the girl's growth only by webcam. Another gold medalist,...

US disrupts Olympic party with human rights attack on China America has openly attacked China for failing to live up to its Olympic promise to improve human rights after eight US citizens were arrested and imprisoned without trial for their part in a pro-Tibet demonstration. By Peter Foster in Beijing Last Updated: 12:20PM BST 24 Aug 2008 The Foreign and Commonwealth Office called on China to 'respect its commitment to freedom of expression' Photo: AFP In an unusually candid statement issued on the eve of the Olympic closing ceremony the US Embassy in Beijing expressed mounting frustration with China's refusal...

Grannies vow to fight on after punishment for Olympic protests Fri Aug 22, 11:14 AM BEIJING (AFP) - Two Beijing grandmothers remained defiant and in good spirits Friday despite being sentenced to one year of reeducation through labour for applying to protest during the Olympics. In an interview with AFP, neighbours Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, said they had not received compensation after their homes were demolished by the city government seven years ago and were simply fighting for their rights. "We have done nothing wrong," said Wang. "They won't let me protest, then they sentence me to...

"The professional Cubanologist pundits have been advocating for Cuba to adopt the "Chinese" model economy for some time. Now Barack Obama wants the U.S. to follow China's lead on building infrastructure. Sounds good. All we need is an omnipotent centralized power structure and a population of about 1 billion more slave laborers. " - Henry Louis Gomez / Babalublog.com

Well, as long as you forget about the oppressive Communist government and the lack of freedom and the Internet filtering and the re-education camps … China sounds really groovy: Everybody’s watching what’s going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business you’re starting to think, “Beijing looks like a pretty good option.”Does Barack Obama understand the nature of the Beijing regime? The...

Chinese may have killed 140 Tibetans this week: Dalai Lama 2 hours, 14 minutes ago Chinese security forces opened fire on a crowd this week in eastern Tibet and may have killed 140 people, the Dalai Lama told a French daily on Thursday. "The Chinese army again fired on a crowd on Monday August 18, in the Kham region in eastern Tibet," he told Le Monde. "One hundred and forty Tibetans are reported to have been killed, but the figure needs to be confirmed."

China to show propaganda opera at Olympics Bandian Rijiu, who plays the Tibetan king, and his bride Deng Mian, the Chinese princess, rehearse in Beijing Jane Macartney in Beijing “This is a wedding. It's a festive occasion. Look happy, much happier. Do that scene again and this time let's really feel your joy. Move the audience ...” The famed Peking Opera director Gao Mukun barked out his orders to the chastened cast of a show timed as a finale for the Beijing Olympics. The Tibetan performers hooted with delight and kept their smiles in place for the last scene of...

Liu Xiang sent to Olympic death by China's £1 billion image-building exercise On the back of yesterday's China Daily, the English language newspaper in Beijing, the face of Liu Xiang filled a broadsheet page. But the tears had been airbrushed out, so to speak. By Kevin Garside Last Updated: 2:54PM BST 20 Aug 2008 Comments 29 | Comment on this article China's Olympic pin-up was selling the Nike brand and his country. He is the face of Nike in China, and of China across the globe. He didn't develop an ankle spur, injure his Achilles or damage his hamstring on...

BEIJING — Two elderly Chinese women have been sentenced to a year of “re-education through labor” after they repeatedly sought a permit to demonstrate in one of the official Olympic protest areas, according to family members and human rights advocates. The women, Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, had made five visits to the police this month in an effort to obtain permission to protest what they contended was inadequate compensation for the demolition of their homes in Beijing. During their final visit on Monday, Public Security officials informed them that they had been given administrative sentences for “disturbing...

Pity poor Tan Zongliang, the latest victim of China Central Television’s relentless demand for perfection. Before its interrogators got to him, Tan was feeling fairly pleased with himself. After failing at three previous Olympics, he had just won his first medal, a bronze in the men’s 50m pistol competition. He had forgotten, though, that every time a competitor secures anything less than gold for the Motherland, a CCTV journalist is dispatched to find out what went wrong – and if a self-flagellating apology is elicited in the process, then so much the better.

Soldiers operating the huge scroll that formed the centrepiece of last week's Olympic opening ceremony had to stay hidden under the structure for up to seven hours, wearing nappies because they were not allowed toilet breaks, state media reported on Friday. Nearly 900 soldiers were hidden underneath the scroll, many of them moving giant printing blocks with Chinese characters, the Beijing News reported. "The performers for Chinese character parts went into the models underground at 2 pm, and after getting in there they could not come out," the newspaper quoted choreographer Han Lixun as saying. "The underground area was so...

Briton and Australian among five detained for Beijing Tibet protest Jane Macartney in Beijing A Briton and an Australian-Canadian staged the latest challenge to Chinese rule in Tibet this morning, climbing up a huge billboard in front of the headquarters of Chinese Central Television in Beijing and unfurling a huge banner calling for a free Tibet. Philip Kirk, 24, from Hertfordshire and Nicole Rycroft, 41, a former national rower for Australia, carried out the latest demonstration against Chinese rule of the deeply Buddhist Himalayan region. The move is deeply embarrassing for China with the eyes of the world watching it...

The fleet of silver pickups may not have wowed the planet when Atlanta welcomed the 1996 Olympics, but at least the trucks and the marching bands and the gospel choirs were real. That's more than you can say for two key elements of Friday's dazzling Opening Ceremony in Beijing. Not only were some fireworks faked for TV, but the perfect little girl shown performing a Chinese anthem wasn't the owner of the perfect voice that appeared to come from her mouth. A Chinese Politburo member watching a rehearsal didn't like the teeth of Yang Peiyi, 7, who had won a...

Excerpt - Speaking by telephone from the back of the police van as he was driven away, Ray said: "I have been roughed up. They dragged me, pulled me and knocked me to the ground. Now they are filming me." He could then be heard asking the officers with him: "Why are you filming? I am a British journalist. I have all the Olympic accreditation I need." Police officers could then be heard asking: "What's your opinion on Tibet?" Ray replied: "I have no opinion on Tibet. I am a journalist." A police officer could then be heard telling him...

Live Blogging the Opening Ceremonies Mark Starr 12:03--Well they can't keep a secret in this town any better than anywhere else. Li Ning gets the honor. He takes a giant leap--and the final lap around the highest wall inside the stadium to light the cauldron. Fireworks ensue. Good job, China. Let the Games begin! 11:54--The torch is in the building! 11:53--I should have said "doves" with quotation marks. Ever since there was an accidental holocaust of the "peace" birds at one ceremony, the dovishness is strictly symbolic. 100 young women in white gesticulating gently did their dovish best.

So how should Freepers feel about the Olympics? Should we write about it, post about it or covering it in any way? I feel that every American (including President Bush) that are in attendance at the Olympics are traitors to democracy and civilization. These commie bastards are our enemies. Each and every Chinese citizen (and I use that term citizen very euphemistically), each man, woman and child are enemies to the USA, the west, and basic civilization. They look at us as enemies and we should return the favor. Look where pretending that "they really don't mean it" got us...

BEIJING (AFP) - At least two people died early Sunday in a series of explosions in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang, state media said, in an attack that eyewitnesses said was followed by gunfire. The report did not say who was responsible for the blasts which came little more than a day after the start of the Olympics in Beijing. Uighur separatists in Xinjiang have in video statements threatened to attack the sporting event and Chinese authorities have also warned that "terrorists" from home and abroad pose a massive threat to the Games. The blasts on Sunday occurred between...

Had the National Population and Family Planning Commission not rescinded its invitation, I would be in China right now as the Olympics opened. But the Commission, which is responsible for enforcing the one-child policy, belatedly realized that I was a well-known critic of that policy--and of that country's human rights record in general-- and barred the door. I confess to not having been overly disappointed by their decision. Despite the fact that I read, write and speak Chinese, it would have been nearly impossible for me to do anything else in Beijing but the one thing that I will not...

A knife-wielding Chinese man attacked two relatives of a coach for the U.S. Olympic men's volleyball team at a tourist site in Beijing, killing one and injuring the other on the first day of the Olympics on Saturday, team officials and state media said. The man then committed suicide by throwing himself from the second story of the site, the 13th century Drum Tower just five miles from the main Olympics site. The brutal attack shortly after midday was all the more shocking because of the rarity of violent crime against foreigners in tightly controlled China, which has ramped up...

WASHINGTON — Though it was hoped that the Olympic Games would bring about an opening on religious freedom and human rights in China, the opposite seems to have occurred.That’s according to observers and religious freedom activists. “Instead of improvements in conditions for religious freedom and other human rights, we’ve seen broad efforts to crack down on and control religious activity,” Nina Shea, senior fellow with the Center for Religious Freedom, told the Congressional Task Force for International Religious Freedom June 20. Steve Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, believes that the Chinese government will do anything to avoid...

Reporters charged with covering the Olympics are now whining about "not knowing what they will be able to cover and not knowing how much the Chinese government will censor their online coverage." The fact that the mainstream media is even remotely surprised at a Communist Government not allowing complete freedom of the press is laughable, irrespective of the fact that China promised them complete freedom to report on the events after this one party state was awarded the honor of hosting the Olympics. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is absolutely right when he reminds folks that the Chinese government is "only doing...

Woman falls from consulate in Olympics protest Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, August 7, 2008 (08-06) 13:03 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- A rappelling protester fell two stories from the roof of the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco Wednesday, two days before the Olympic Games begin in Beijing and amid worldwide protest against China's human rights record in Tibet. San Francisco police and the State Department are conducting a joint investigation into the incident, including claims that the protester's ropes may have been intentionally cut. The protester was identified as Nyendak Wangden, 22, of Suisun City and a member of...

Beijing smog makes for a painful jog Will Pavia in Beijing All day yesterday Beijing was obscured by thick grey air, a phenomenon known in the Chinese state media as “overcast and hazy skies”, and described by the rest of the world as smog. Beijingers claim that the smog has thinned slightly in recent weeks, thanks to the factory closures and the one million cars removed from the roads, but still, for the newly arrived visitor, the vast windows of Beijing’s new airport terminal present an astonishing vista of nothingness. “We were gobsmacked when we landed,” an American athlete said....

PARIS (AFP) - Police banned demonstrations outside the Chinese embassy in Paris on Thursday but critics of China's human rights record stepped up protests elsewhere in the world to mark the start of the Beijing Olympics. Police in the French capital said they did not want a repeat of the "violent disturbances" that broke out in April when the Olympic torch passed through Paris, when activists angry at China's crackdown in Tibet disrupted the route. They banned any protests outside the embassy on Thursday and Friday, when the Games officially open, including a demonstration planned Friday by a coalition including...

Why Every American Should Care About China The Emerging Superpower Is Forging Relationships Where the U.S. Isn't   By BOB WOODRUFF, GABRIELLE TENENBAUM, SUSAN SCHAEFER and MEENA HARTENSTEINAug. 6, 2008   When the Olympics begin Friday in Beijing it will be a "coming out" party of sorts for China. Beijing hopes this will be a bright spot in what has otherwise been a tough year -- the country was hit by a devastating earthquake and rocked by scandals over tainted food and medicine and toxic toys. There have been protests, both within China and in other countries, about its...

Two Americans and two British nationals have been ordered to leave China “within a prescribed time limit” after displaying “Free Tibet” banners near an Olympic venue in Beijing on Wednesday, local police said. Two are expected to leave on Wednesday night and the other two on Thursday. “They disrupted public order and violated Chinese laws. Their period of stay in the country will hereby be cut short according to the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Control of the Entry and Exit of Aliens,” the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said in a statement issued late on Wednesday....

Bush to rebuke China on human rights, dissidents Wed Aug 6, 2008 9:42am EDT BANGKOK (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush plans to voice deep concerns about human rights in China in a speech on Thursday, hours before he arrives in Beijing for the opening of the Olympic Games. "The United States believes the people of China deserve the fundamental liberty that is the natural right of all human beings," Bush will say in a speech in Bangkok, copies of which were released in advance. "So America stands in firm opposition to China's detention of political dissidents, human rights...

‘Chinese Military Shifts Focus to Ethnic Minorities’ AUGUST 06, 2008 06:44 The priority of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has changed from deterring Taiwan’s independence to preventing separatist movements by ethnic minorities and fighting terrorism. The Hong Kong daily Ming Pao said yesterday that the change was prompted by growing terrorist activities in the autonomous region of Xinjiang and improving ties between Beijing and Taipei. The Liberation Army Daily said Monday that the Nanjing army, which had deterred Taiwan from declaring independence, conducted large-scale anti-terrorism drills July 30. The exercises included fighter planes and bombers in Xinjiang and the Gobi...

Two Britons arrested over Tibet flag protest in Beijing Jane Macartney and Will Pavia in Beijing Four protesters have been arrested after a Briton and an American scaled two flood-lighting poles near the centre of Beijing's tightly patrolled Olympic park this morning and unfurled banners calling for Tibetan independence. Despite intense security that had been ratcheted up further in preparation for the arrival of the Olympic torch relay in the Chinese capital today, the protesters were able to display Tibetan flags and two 140 square-foot banners beside the iconic Bird's Nest Stadium that will host the Olympics opening ceremony on...

Chinese police Tuesday apologised for roughing up two Japanese journalists as Beijing's Olympic commitment to allow foreign media freedom came under scrutiny three days before the Games opened. The apology came after border police "clashed" with the Japanese journalists who had arrived in the Muslim-majority Xinjiang region after an alleged terrorist attack Monday left 16 police dead, Xinhua news agency said. "The local foreign affairs department made an apology Tuesday to two Japanese reporters," Xinhua said. A photographer for the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper was forcibly detained late Monday and kicked by police in the city of Kashgar, his employer said....

Has China got a terrorist problem? The Uighur attack in the northwest was shocking but not a precursor to a bigger outrage Rosemary Righter The Olympics will open on Friday inside a triple ring of steel. Anti-terrorism precautions have been an unavoidable feature of the Games since the PLO massacre of Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, but China has taken things to extremes. It has mobilised 110,000 police and other security forces in Beijing itself, plus 1.4 million security “volunteers” with Red Guard-style armbands and no fewer than 300,000 spy cameras. The security bill for Beijing alone exceeds £3...

The clock is winding down on the start of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China. On Aug 8, the historic Games will begin. Over 500,000 visitors will flock to Beijing and 10,000 competitors will participate in 203 events in 28 sports. It will be the most expensive Olympics in history – China has spent $40 billion upgrading infrastructures in and around Beijing. For China, it was suppose to be a “coming out” party. When China was awarded the Games in 2001, the state news agency reported: “The Games will be a milestone in China’s rising international status and...

NBC’s Matt Lauer, broadcasting live from the Great Wall of China on Monday’s "Today" show, referred to the "double-edged sword" of the world’s attention being on China for the Summer Olympic Games and asked a Chinese professor about how that "spotlight" might be "co-opted by party crashers who have a bone to pick with this country. He then asked the professor, "How worried are the people here about that?" Lauer, who will be in China during the next weeks for the Olympics, interviewed Professor Teng Dimeng of the Beijing Foreign Studies University 20 minutes into 7 am Eastern hour of...

By Chuck BaldwinAccording to numerous press reports, President George W. Bush plans to attend the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, China later this month. Bush said that it "would be an affront to the Chinese people" if he stayed away. Other world leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain, are choosing to not attend the opening ceremonies in the communist country. It is hard for this writer to laud President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but in this case, even the socialist Roosevelt showed more integrity than our so-called "conservative" President, George...

via translation- ALERT - China: 16 customs officers killed and 16 wounded in an attack in Xinjiang BEIJING - Sixteen customs officers were killed and sixteen others injured Monday morning when the attack on their post in Xinjiang, Muslim region of northwestern China, according to the China New Agency.

BEIJING -- Normally smog plagued Beijing bathed in blue skies and sunshine on Saturday in just the sort of weather the Chinese pray will grace their Olympics and banish athletes' health fears six days before the big start. Experts attributed a rare day of fine weather in the Chinese capital to overnight rain and -- finally -- the impact of strict anti pollution measures such as ordering half the cars off the road and closing smoke-belching factories. "You see, we have done it! You can even see the mountains," enthused one Chinese student volunteer near the magnificent, newly built "Bird's...

Olympic Games show China through a glass, darkly As the opening approaches, preparations reflect a disturbing side of the communist regime Jonathan Fenby Olympic Games news The opening of the Beijing Olympics in eight days' time will, as always planned, attest to China's spectacular material progress since Deng Xiaoping launched market-led economic reform exactly 30 years ago. The array of venues, the gleaming new buildings, the urban infrastructure installed for the Games, will also reflect the genuine pride of a nation that, while still far from rich by Western standards, has made more people better off in a shorter time...

BEIJING (AFP) - Foreign reporters will not have complete access to the Internet during the Beijing Olympics, Games organisers said Wednesday, reversing a pledge to bring down the Chinese firewall of censorship. Sites linked to the banned Falungong spiritual movement and other unspecified ones would remain blocked for the thousands of foreign reporters covering the Games, organising committee spokesman Sun Weide told AFP. "During the Olympic Games we will provide sufficient access to the Internet for reporters," said Sun Weide, spokesman for the organising committee. However "sufficient" access falls short of the complete Internet freedoms for foreign reporters that China's...

BEIJING (AFP) - The Beijing Olympics were plunged into another controversy on Wednesday as China announced a backflip on Internet freedoms for the thousands of foreign reporters covering the Games. China's decision to reverse a pledge on allowing unfettered web access proved an embarrassment for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which had repeatedly said foreign press would not face any Internet curbs in Beijing. It was also the latest in a long line of issues to have tarnished the run-up to the Olympics, which start on August 8, following controversies over pollution, human rights and terrorism threats. Beijing Olympic organising...

Beijing's struggle to deal with foreign journalists covering the Olympics reached a new low Friday. As 30,000 people queued for the last Olympics ticket sales, fist-fights broke out. Police and soldiers tried to keep journalists from recording the mayhem. A photojournalist for Hong Kong's South China Morning Post was detained for six hours. Two from Hong Kong's Now TV channel were detained, and the station reports that police asked them to delete their footage. All the journalists were from Hong Kong, suggesting police may have been particularly forceful with ethnically Chinese reporters. Meanwhile, the government continues to block news Web...

The human rights situation in China has deteriorated, not improved, with its hosting of the Olympic Games this year, campaigners Amnesty International say. It documents the use of "re-education through labour", the suppression of rights activists and journalists, and the use of arbitrary imprisonment. A spokesman urged world leaders due to attend the Games, opening in 10 days, to speak out against the violations. Chinese officials were not commenting on the report ahead of its publication. However, Beijing routinely denies allegations that it abuses human rights, arguing that recent reforms have improved the situation and saying its economic management has...

The New York branch of the revolutionary youth organization FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) first held a Marxist discussion on the role of the Dalai Lama and his entanglements with the CIA and then turned the talk into action.

If you ask me, China is the last place that the Islamos should think of starting trouble. But I guess they are not that smart. Five days ago Muslims bombed several buses in the Kunming region of China.(1) Apparently they did not learn their lesson from the past executions of Islamic separatists in 2000 and 2007 (2&3). Their beef is.......the usual, we want our own state with in another state.

Aussies 'can pull out' over Beijing smog 28th July 2008, 12:56 WST Australian athletes will not be pressured into competing at the Beijing Olympic Games if the air pollution poses a threat to their health and safety. Australian Olympic Committee vice president Peter Montgomery said athletes had the freedom to pull out of events if Beijing's $17 billion push to improve the air quality fails. Marathon world record holder Haile Gebrselassie, an asthmatic, has pulled out of the long distance event in Beijing due to concerns the smog would cause lasting damage to his lungs.

China is considering even more stringent measures to control pollution as Beijing continues to be shrouded in smog less than two weeks before the Olympics. The National Stadium know as the 'Bird's Nest' seen through thick smog The area where the games will take place failed the government's own smog targets, even as officials opened the Olympic Village with great fanfare. The air was "unhealthy for sensitive groups," the city's environmental protection bureau said. The official targets are themselves much looser than those considered "safe" by the World Health Organisation. "It doesn't really look so good," said Gunilla Lindberg, the...

Prague- Chinese ambassador to the Czech Republic Huo Yuzhen on Friday complained at the Czech Foreign Ministry about Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek having had a Tibetan flag on his lapel at the moment he announced his trip to the Beijing Olympics, Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes today. Czech ambassador to China Vitezslav Grepl was summoned over the affair to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, MfD writes. Obviously, Topolanek will not be given any opportunity to meet a high-ranking Chinese official during his stay in China, it adds. "Grepl was summoned to the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing where the diplomats protested...

Personally, I do have some mixed feelings about the Dalai Lama. While I do not buy into all of the conspiracy theories about links between him and the CIA or his involvement in the recent Tibet uprisings, I am not convinced that his organization is as clean ‘as the driven snow’ as so many would like to suggest. I realize that he won a Nobel Peace Prize some years ago, but after it was bestowed upon Al Gore last year, I lost faith in the value of that distinction. No matter how peaceful of a man he is able to...

'Old friend' McCain chides China in Dalai Lama visit By Curtis Wackerle, Aspen Daily News Saturday, July 26, 2008 China must release all Tibetan political prisoners and account for the disappearance of protesters after last spring's uprising, Sen. John McCain said after meeting with the Dalai Lama on Friday. Next month's Beijing Olympics must be a time for China to demonstrate to the world its commitment to "basic human rights," said McCain, who called on China and Tibet to engage in a "meaningful dialogue on genuine autonomy for Tibet." McCain also referenced the disappearance of people after the conflict in...

Uighur group claims China bus attacks, threatens Olympics Sat Jul 26, 3:14 AM ET A Uighur separatist group has taken credit for a deadly bus bombing in Shanghai in May and warned of new attacks in China during the Olympics, a group monitoring threats by extremists on the Internet said. In a video statement, Commander Seyfullah of the Turkestan Islamic Party 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 explosive-laden tractor; a bombing of a Guangzhou plastic factory on...