Beijing Olympics: a resounding success for everything but democracy

Thank you, Jay, for being one of a few Olympic journalists to actually scrutinize the Games in the context of the real world.  This short story notes that the Games were a huge success for host country China, but a real failure in pressuring the Chinese to open their political system and allow basic political freedoms.

Around the sports, there were promises broken. The major Catch-22 was the so-called protest zones. Those alone are not unusual. At the U.S. political conventions in Denver and St. Paul, similar zones for demonstrations have been set aside. They were established in Athens and Sydney, too, for previous Games.

But here, it's been reported in the Western media, if a Chinese citizen applied for a protest permit, they instead were arrested. (emphasis mine)

...As for Darfur and Tibet, they were distant shouts amid the festive din. The only news was that visas were denied to Darfur advocates. It's too bad there was such a news blackout.

Hard to believe that before the Games began, there were a number of highly respected journalists and democracy advocates calling these the Genocide Olympics.  All I heard about was Michael Phelps.

P.S. Though he was awesome.

American business: providing superior service to totalitarians internationally

Nothing like a little U.S. private sector ingenuity to help the Chinese government keep an eye on their peons:

China is building the largest and most sophisticated people-tracking network in the world, all to track citizens in the city of Shenzhen. This network utilizes 20,000 intelligent digital cameras and RFID cards to keep track of the 12.4 million people living in the Southern port city. The key to the system is the new residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips. 'Data on the chip will include not just the citizen's name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord's phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included...

Who cares about human rights and democracy. We're doing great business!

When overcoming disability becomes liability

This article shares the story of an Olympic hopeful, a man who has been running for years and who hopes to travel to China in 2008 with the South African Olympic team. There's one significant difference between Oscar Pistorius and your typical sprinter, however. He's got two prosthetic legs.

Despite the incredible feat of overcoming the loss of both his legs from a birth defect, the international track and field organization (IAAF) are now considering banning him from competition, because they postulate that his prosthetic limbs may give him a competitive advantage. However, the facts suggest otherwise:

According to Gailey [an associate professor of physical therapy at the University of Miami Medical School], a prosthetic leg returns only about 80 percent of the energy absorbed in each stride, while a natural leg returns up to 240 percent, providing much more spring...

...There are many disadvantages to sprinting on carbon-fiber legs, Pistorius and his coach said. After a cumbersome start, he needs about 30 meters to gain his rhythm. His knees do not flex as readily, limiting his power output. His grip can be unsure in the rain. And when he runs into a headwind or grows fatigued, he must fight rotational forces that turn his prosthetic devices sideways, said Ampie Louw, who coaches Pistorius.

In other words, Pistorius is actually at a disadvantage. The arguments get steadily more inane:

Foremost among the I.A.A.F.’s concerns is that Pistorius’s prosthetic limbs may make him taller than he would have been on natural legs and may unfairly lengthen his stride, allowing him to lower his best times by several seconds in the past three years, while most elite sprinters improve by hundredths of a second.

His legs aren't getting any longer, dummies. And Pistorius is hardly a giant, standing 6 feet, 1.25 inches with his prosthetics. Despite the science of the prosthetic and the inanity of the IAAF complaints, the typical slippery slope arguments follow:

A sobering question was posed recently on the Web site of the Connecticut-based Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. “Given the arms race nature of competition,” will technological advantages cause “athletes to do something as seemingly radical as having their healthy natural limbs replaced by artificial ones?” wrote George Dvorsky, a member of the institute’s board of directors. “Is it self-mutilation when you’re getting a better limb?”

How about this rule. You can only compete in prosthetics that are used to replace bum legs (or no legs). And you can only sit on the IAAF if you've had your brain removed. So far we're batting .500.

A Leader by Example

It's fairly depressing when the world leader in freedom and democracy gets berated in front of a UN panel on torture. By China.

But before your righteous and indignant retort about Chinese hypocrisy, read up on the allegations and the American response to allegations of torture.