United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

Looking back on the 2008 Olympic Games, what they cost the Chinese people, and how they were covered by NBC, the Nation said Sunday that they were above all "a powerful demonstration of the way the elephants of the east and west can link trunks and happily trample the suffering grass."[1] -- And what did viewers learn? -- "From NBC's coverage we learned that China is totally awesome, Michael Phelps can really swim and Usain Bolt is way fast," Dave Zirin said. "Oh, and there are pandas there. Some of whom died in the Sichuan earthquake. We can't forget about the pandas." -- But nothing about the "the near two million people evicted from their homes to make way for Olympic facilities," "the foreign nationals who as of this writing, are still being held in Chinese prisons for daring to protest," or "the Tibetan citizens removed from their service jobs by state law for the duration of the games." ...

Not since Marco Polo has anyone traveled so far up China's Silk Road with such amoral élan. But there was Jacques Rogge, president of the IOC, knight of the court of King Leopold's Belgium, three-time Olympian in the grand sport of yachting, standing astride Beijing at the close of the 2008 Olympic games. In front of 90,000 at the Games' he said, "Tonight, we come to the end of sixteen glorious days which we will cherish forever. Through these games, the world learned more about China, and China learned more about the world."

But what did the world really learn? From NBC's coverage we learned that China is totally awesome, Michael Phelps can really swim and Usain Bolt is way fast. Oh, and there are pandas there. Some of whom died in the Sichuan earthquake. We can't forget about the pandas.

As the Washington Post's veteran columnist Thomas Boswell wrote in his last missive from Beijing: "In all my decades at the Post, this is the first event I've covered at which I was certain that the main point of the exercise was to co-opt the Western media, including NBC, with a splendidly pretty, sparsely attended, completely controlled sports event inside a quasi-military compound. We had little alternative but to be a conduit for happy-Olympics, progressive-China propaganda. I suspect it worked."

I applaud Boswell for his honesty, but it is hard to not have contempt for the aside that "we had little alternative" but to dance the infomercial shuffle.

They chose not to seek out the near two million people evicted from their homes to make way for Olympic facilities.

They chose not to report on the Chinese citizens who tried to register to enter the cordoned off "protest zones" only to find themselves in police custody.

They chose not to report on the Tibetan citizens removed from their service jobs by state law for the duration of the games.

They chose to not point out the bizarre hypocrisy of seeing Michael Phelps -- with full media fanfare -- taking a group of Chinese children to their first meal at McDonalds. (Even though Phelps famously eats 12,000 calories a day during training, I can't imagine much of it comes from Mickey D's.)

They chose not to report on the foreign nationals who as of this writing, are still being held in Chinese prisons for daring to protest. (According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Embassy today urged China to free those jailed for protesting at the games. The embassy gently suggested, that China could stand to show "greater tolerance and openness.")

They chose not to ask why George W. Bush was the first U.S. president to attend the Olympics on foreign soil, and why the State Department last April took China off its list of nations that commit human rights violations.

They chose not to ask whether it was a conflict of interest for General Electric to both own NBC and be one of the primary sponsors of the games as well as the supplier of much of the games' electronic security apparatus, including 300,000 close circuit cameras, which will most likely remain in place once the world has turned its attention elsewhere.

They chose not to ask and re-ask the question of why the games were in Beijing in the first place, when Rogge and Beijing organizing committee head Liu Qi both promised that the Olympics would come alongside significant improvements in human rights.

As Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch said: "The reality is that the Chinese government's hosting of the games has been a catalyst for abuses, leading to massive forced evictions, a surge in the arrest, detention, and harassment of critics, repeated violations of media freedom, and increased political repression. Not a single world leader who attended the games or members of the IOC seized the opportunity to challenge the Chinese government's behavior in any meaningful way."

The legacy of these games will be in no short order: China's dominance, in winning more gold medals than the U.S.; the brilliant performances of Phelps; Bolt and the dominance of the Jamaican sprinters. But we should also remember the ravaging of a country, sacrificed at the altar of commercialism and "market penetration." And we should recall a mainstream press, derelict in its duty, telling us they had "little alternative" but to turn this shandeh into a globalization informerical.

Liu Qi called the Olympics "a grand celebration of sport, of peace and friendship." Instead it was a powerful demonstration of the way the elephants of the east and west can link trunks and happily trample the suffering grass.