Sports Today in the Olympics
posted by on July 30 at 12:02 PM
Organizers of the Beijing Olympics have set up a sex-determination laboratory to evaluate “suspect” female athletes, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported Sunday. The lab is similar to ones set up at previous Olympics in Sydney and Athens, and will draw on the resources of the Peking Union Medical College Hospital to evaluate an athlete’s external appearance, hormones and genes. …Despite decades of rigorous testing of women athletes, only one known case of gender cheating exists in the history of the modern Olympics — and it was not uncovered by a sex-determination test.
Since the Olympic Village press center opened on Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages — among them those that discuss Tibetan succession, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown of the protests in Tiananmen Square and the sites of Amnesty International, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse.A government spokesman initially suggested the problems originated with the site hosts, but on Wednesday, he acknowledged that journalists would not have unfettered Internet use during the Games, which begin Aug. 8….
As recently as two weeks ago, Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic committee president, proclaimed to Agence France-Presse: “For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet.”
In older news, Tug of War used to be an Olympic sport.
I miss those days. Tug of War as an olympic sport and ring toss using garlands of grape leaves.
Every time I visit China, just for fun I try to visit Amnesty's website and get an "Error 404 - Page Not Found".
Trying to use Wikipedia gives the same result (serves me right, I suppose).
However, I was able to read Slog without any censorship. Go figure.
Well, cause you know the journalists back in the other countries, it's not like they can get to those websites and add information to stories, right China? I mean by blocking the journalists while in China you are definitely preventing any negative information getting into the world press, right? And its not like the act of blocking journalists from information would be perceived in any way as negative, right?
fuck, they're going to stamp their little bound feet the first time Jesse Owens wins a medal!
The funniest things to watch are the "journalists" from Hong Kong getting beat up by the Chinese police as they learn that they too are subject to the pro-Bush Nanny State of Red China.
N00bz.
All your freedom are belong to Beijing.
If it's a choice between introducing golf or bringing back tug-o-war, I say bring back tug-o-war. National pride at it's finest!
China censors the internet? AM TEH SURPRIZED.
That just makes me miss the Battle of the Network Stars. Robert Conrad, *sigh*.
Glenn Greenwald did a good piece on this, titled:
"Those privacy-hating Chinese communist tyrants"
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/30/china/index.html
Who get to pick out who is inspected?
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