Will the 2008 Beijing Olympics Rival the 1936 Berlin and 1968 Mexico City Games?

[mandy]

As the Beijing Olympics draw near, the whole world will be watching as China attempts to regulate what the whole world can watch. Free speech advocates are seemingly pouring out of the woodwork, and the climate appears ripe for an incident reminiscent of the protest against Hitler at the 1936 games in Berlin, or the raised fists at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City...

That warning comes from human rights groups and Internet free speech advocacy organizations following news this week that Beijing would restrict Internet use for international journalists covering the games, despite what the media was previously told by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Chinese officials are also sticking by restrictions placed on athletes who want to report on or blog about the competition...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/must-read/64013.html

[mandy]

Update: the International Olympic Committee has filed a DMCA to get a video of a  'Free Tibet' protest last week at the Chinese consulate in NYC pulled from YouTube.  YouTube is owned by Google, a company which in the (recent) past has been all too happy to get down on its knees and pleasure censor happy officials in the Chinese government.

http://blog.studentsforafreetibet.org/20...#more-1544

The 5 rings in the IOC logo apparently represent censorship, human rights violations, political repression, lapdogs, and boinktards.

ps.  You can watch the censored video at Vimeo
http://vimeo.com/1494443