Olympics 2.012: NBCfail and the future

Photo via Nick Trask

LONDON is currently hosting the last Olympics of the twentieth century as well as the first of the 21^st.  It is the last of the 20^th century because it is the last to be dominated by the century’s most important technology: Television.  London is also the first 21^st century Olympics as it is the first one where the audience has talked back to the organisers and their broadcaster partner proxies. Come Rio in 2016, the Olympics is likely be a very different spectator sport thanks to social media, the power of the Internet and a global movement for more audience power. 

The professional Olympics are huge money and have become partly slave to its sponsors who take ridiculous steps to ward off ambush marketing.  However in London as in previous Olympics, most of the shots are called by the television companies who broadcast the games. They pay an extraordinary amount of money to the International Olympics Committee and local Olympic Committees for the rights.  In America, the largest of the old-style TV hegemonies NBC has had the rights to the summer and winter Olympics since 1988. Four years ago they paid the AOC and IOC $2.2 billion for the Vancouver 2010 and London 2012. NBC made the London Games the most-watched Olympics ever by tape-delaying marquee events to air in US prime time, maximising viewers and advertising dollars. 

Yet they are likely to lose money despite the large audience they have congregated for advertisers.  NBC lost $223 million on Vancouver. It was on tape delay despite being in the same timezone as LA. This allowed NBC to maximise ads but it frustrated audiences who for the first time were seeing results in real time through the Internet and social media. For the TV companies who had the content but who could no longer control the message, these external forces had become,as Jeff Jarvis called them, a "gigantic spoiler machine".

The spoiler machine has been on overdrive in the 2012 Olympics. London is four hours east of the US east coast and also on tape delay and the response has been overwhelmingly negative. NBC refused to show the opening ceremony in real time because it was “too complicated to watch”. An NBC statement defended the indefensible thus: “They are complex entertainment spectacles that do not translate well online because they require context, which our award-winning production team will provide for the large prime-time audiences that gather together to watch them. We will be providing clips and highlights of each ceremony online so viewers know what to look forward to in primetime on NBC.”

But when it got to actual competition, the “award-winning production team” stuffed up again. They advertised an interview with swimming champion Missy Franklin before showing her gold medal-winning race. These abject failures and others led to Steven Marx creating the “nbcfail” hashtag which went berserk.  But it was UK Independent LA-based journalist Guy Adams who led the most high profile attack with a series of criticisms online which eventually saw NBC call in favours at Twitter to suspend his account. 

Adams had tweeted the email address of an NBC executive in charge of Olympics coverage, when he was upset over the quality of that coverage, encouraging others upset to contact the executive.  “The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven't started yet is Gary Zenkel. Tell him what u think! Email: Gary.zenkel@nbcuni.com.

 

Twitter claimed this breached their guidelines as it contained Zenkel’s email. Adams retorted Zenkel’s corporate email address was widely available.  The response to the ban was scathing. Novelist Irvine Welsh said the ban illustrated three tendencies of hegemonic power “1) hates criticism, 2) takes itself seriously 3) no sense of fun.”

NBC Sports Chairman Mark Lazarus claimed they understood the problem but his words betrayed they hadn’t. “We listen. We read. We understand there are people that don't like what we are doing, but we think that is a very loud minority and the silent majority has been with us for the first six days," Lazarus said.  Well of course the “silent majority” have been with NBC for a week because they have no choice if they want to watch the Olympics. Silence is not assent. Not everyone took to Twitter or Facebook to complain but as they realise they can, more will.

As in drugs, the technology to beat the TV companies is changing quickly. The BBC offers a comprehensive ad-free service of the Games courtesy of British TV licence holders and the British taxpayer.  On the Internet they use “geoblocking” based on IP address to ensure only British audiences can view the content.  But just as the Chinese get around geo-blocking to access banned political sites, anyone across the world can view the BBC content by masking their IP address using a virtual private network.  As Melbourne's Monash University copyright law teacher Rebecca Giblin said broadcast television is a dying industry. As growing number of people are no longer willing to watch TV on someone else's schedule," Giblin said. "They want to watch it on their own terms when and where it's convenient for them."

With the US delaying the opening ceremony, dodgy sites like VIPBox.TV sprung up to fill the void.  It provides high quality live content at a price. As Mashable noted,  VIPBox.TV wanted to install a proprietary MPlayer on your computer “which comes with a bunch of crapware that you will want to decline, and it is one of those sites that can turn into a bit of a pop-up monster.” VIPBox.TV are the bootleggers of the 21st century. They flourish only because of prohibition.

 

Author, editor and futurist Jeff Jarvis said NBCFail showed how the people formerly known as the audience have found a voice to complain about the time-shifting “We in the U.S. are being robbed of the opportunity to share a common experience with the world in a way that was never before possible,” Jarvis said.  He said the argument that the time-shifting was done to make more money does not stand up. Instead it should have super-served its audience by giving them what they want rather than what Mark Lazarus and Gary Zenkel thought they wanted. “I ask you to imagine what Olympics coverage would look like if Google had acquired the rights,” Jarvis said “It would give us what we want and make billions, I’ll bet."

Sport and Politics: an Olympic history

Munich 1972 was the first Olympics I remember. Aged 8 I have hazy memories of Olga Korbut in the ring, Lasse Viren and Valery Borzov on the track, Mark Spitz in the pool and hooded men in the Village. The Palestinian involvement was an early indication to me the Olympics was about far more than just sport. Here in the middle of the Cold War, the US and USSR were once again battling for supremacy in Germany.   

Only six nations nations have topped the OIympic medal tally: USA (16), Soviet Union (7), China (1), Germany (1), France (1) and Britain (1). The US dominated most of the 20th century but the Russians beat them in 1956 and 1960. As the space race intensified, the US regained control in the 1960s.  By Munich it was the turn of the USSR to come out ahead again. I remember this strange thing called “East Germany” with their forbidding looking athletes running a very creditable third well ahead of their western rivals despite a population of just 16 million people to the West's 50 million plus. They would rub salt in fellow German wounds with another home soil victory in the World Cup two years later in the only time they would ever meet (the West lost that battle but won the war against the Dutch in the final). 

With the pride of communism on the line, the 70s and 80s were the glory era of East German sport. It was the German College for Physical Culture which produced with ruthless efficiency the coaches, trainers and sports medicine personnel responsible for East Germany's remarkable success. There was drugs and cheating there but there was also genuine success. The problem was, as 1980 Olympic 110-metre hurdles gold medallist Thomas Munkelt said, “we ran our sports by the performance principle, but not our economy."

The 1980 Olympics was East Germany’s first high water mark. It was also the year any doubt the Olympics wasn’t political was wiped out with the west’s boycott after Afghanistan. Without the US, the East Germans ran second to the Russians. The Russians got their own back and boycotted Los Angeles in 1984. They cited “security concerns, chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria whipped up in the United States” but no one was in any doubt it was tit-for-tat. 

Little brother East Germany wasn't there either but Ceausescu’s Romania was the one Communist Bloc that ignored Konstantin Chernenko’s directive and they finished second to the Americans. 1984 was notable for another reason. Five years earlier, the IOC decided to rename the Republic of China to Chinese Taipei. With Taiwan downgraded, China would not lose face by competing for the first time since 1952.  They finished a creditable fourth in their first outing.

The Seoul Olympics in 1988 was the first truly global Olympics. It was also the first since Montreal to feature the US and the Soviets. East Germany were there too and they forced the Americans into third place. Other eastern bloc countries in the top ten were Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. The Chinese dropped to 11^th.  But East Germany’s second high water mark was to mark a rapidly changing tide. 

The stunning collapse of Eastern bloc Communism meant the medal table in Barcelona looked radically different. The USSR was the last to go in 1991 so there was still a strong “Unified Team” consisting of 12 of the old 15 Soviet republics. They were still unified enough to win the most medals a year later. It would be the last time Moscow would finish in front. East Germany was gone and China was back up to fourth behind the united Germany. There was still an East German clone in Barcelona as one of the last of the Communist countries Cuba finished fifth.

There was further change in the New World Order of Atlanta 1996. On home soil, the Americans finally beat the Russians for the first time since 1968. China stayed fourth but cut the gap on Germany as they were doing in the real world. In Sydney, China beat Germany and got the same amount of medals as the hosts (58) but with 28 golds to Australia’s 16. At Athens, China went clear as number two to the Americans. They got fewer medals than the Russians but as they did in Sydney, they knew how to get gold.

In Beijing they did to the Americans what they did to the Russians four years before. The US had 110 medals to China’s 100 but it was 51-36 to the hosts in golds.  China’s remarkable powerhouse economic advance was on display in Beijing and the last four years have accelerated the trend. it will be no surprise, that even without home advantage, they get more medals and golds than anyone else in London.

Sure enough, they have won the first gold of the 2012 Olympics (though arguably that honour belongs to Specsavers). Top-ranked Yi Siling of China captured the first gold medal of the London Olympics in the women's 10-metre air rifle at Royal Artillery Barracks on Saturday. Another Chinese woman, Yu Dan won the bronze.  If the 21^st century is the Asian century, then the place to watch for proof will be the Olympic Medal tally. It won’t be too long before the likes of India and Indonesia become the new East Germany – but getting the economics right as well as the sport.

This Sporting Life: Crawford Report exposes Australia’s Olympic scam

A new report into Australian sport has blasted the idiotic obsession with the Olympic medal count and said it has not resulted in improvements at grassroots level or done enough to combat obesity. The Independent Sports Panel presented The Future of Australian Sport to the Minister of Sport Kate Ellis today to a predictable backlash from the vested interest of Australian Olympic Commission head John Coates. The Crawford report (named for its chair businessman David Crawford) dismissed the AOC call for an extra $100 million to ensure top five status in the 2012 medal count as "not an appropriate measure of Australian performance.” Instead it calls for funding to be re-routed towards grassroots participation and recommends a reform of Australian sporting institutions. (photo credit: Will Palmer)

As Crikey notes many Olympic sports have minimal community participation compared to popular sports like netball and cricket. Yet the Olympics has been a central focus since the 1976 Montreal Games when Australia came away without a single gold medal. Most of the 2007 $90 million federal sports budget was spent on Olympic events. But the Crawford Report says there is so little accounting or accountability in Australian sport that it is impossible to say how much is spent, and to what effect.

It says the only data available is 2000-2001 ABS figures which found Australia spends $2.1 billion on sport. 90 percent of this figure was spent by state and local governments for the upkeep of sporting facilities and participation. Yet there were no performance measures for community sport that matched the overblown Olympic medal count indicators. The report said elite performance in non-Olympic sports and the general health and fitness of Australians need also to be considered in determining the success of Australian sport.

A re-assessment of sporting priorities is necessary, says the report. 80 percent of the commonwealth $90m budget is spent on the Olympics. This means there are some ridiculous discrepancies. Archery gets more money than Australia’s national game of cricket. Water polo gets more money than golf, tennis and lawn bowls combined. This is particularly problematic as these three sports are considered “whole of lifetime” contributors to preventative health care.

Meanwhile the cost of Olympic medals has never been adequately scrutinised. The report estimated each gold medal costs about $15 million with another $4 million for each silver and bronze. Yet there is no evidence that the Olympics lead to higher sports participation. The cost of medals is only likely to increase as other countries invest heavily in their own Olympic programs, often based on Australia’s own successful Institute of Sport model.

The AOC has requested an additional $100 million in funding to maintain Australia’s “top five” medal status. But the stupidity of this target is reflected in the medal discrepancies that favour individual events rather than team events. For instance, there are just two golds in hockey and basketball, but there are 16 in canoe/kayaking. Yet it is the team sports that are far more important to society as a whole. “If we are truly interested in a preventative health agenda through sport,” said the report, “then much of [the federal sports budget] may be better spent on lifetime participants than almost all on a small group of elite athletes who will perform at that level for just a few years.”

The Crawford Report was correct in suggesting Olympic spending was an outrageous waste of money purely to assuage the country’s international inferiority complex. And if there was any doubt the report was correct, it was removed by Coates himself with his nonsensical description that “it was un-Australian to settle for second best”. Coates called the report “disrespectful” and claimed Olympic funding was “vitally important to the nation”. He could, of course, offer no proof why this was so important other than to keep his own gravy train running. Crawford is correct; it is time to ditch the stupid fascination with the television news-friendly medal counts – they do little more than give the nation a few moments of vicarious pride every four years. It is time to better spend the money on the work-a-day sports that get people out of their armchairs for more than just a cheer.

Stephanie Rice and South Ossetia: Of bread and circuses

Twenty-year old Stephanie Rice took out Australia’s first gold medal in the Beijing Olympics on the same day as Russia intensifies its war with Georgia. No connection really, though you’d have to ask which you’d rather read about if you didn’t have a dog in the fight. Rice has glamour in spades, while the South Ossetian conflict merely has spades.

Stephanie Rice is a full-on media figure, whose mistakes, or blessings, include publicly dating other high-profile swimmers and posting police uniform poses on her Facebook page. But yesterday, she swam a 400m individual medley in a time of just under four and a half minutes. It was the fastest ever at that event and won the gold medal. The silver went to Kirsty Coventry, a white girl from the stolen nation of Zimbabwe. Coventry not only did well for the pariah state, it was also the first medal of any colour in the Beijing Olympics for the entire continent of Africa.

But while most of the eyes of the world are on the various complexities of Beijing, elsewhere nations of the world are at war. Such war is in direct violation of the Olympic truce, the concept of ekecheiria (“holding of hands”) that was enforced during the ancient Olympics. Although some historians now say the idea that ancient Greeks stopped their wars for the Olympics is a nonsense, it hasn’t stopped aid agencies calling for a modern Olympic truce. In 2007 China sponsored UN Resolution G/A 62/L.2 "to promote peace, dialogue and reconciliation in areas of conflict during and beyond the Olympic Games period."

But the nations of Russia and Georgia are not interested at the moment in promoting peace, dialogue and reconciliation. Instead they are engaged in a slowly escalating and complex conflict that has the potential to drag in the wider international community. The war is not totally unexpected, though I got it wrong in May when I thought the flashpoint would be Abkhazia.

Instead the fight is happening several hundred kilometres inland. But South Ossetia is not too dissimilar from Abkhazia. Both are breakaway republics with leanings to Moscow, but for which the rest of the world still believes belongs to Georgia. The name "Georgia" itself is western European and of disputed heritage. The locals call themselves Kartvelebi and their country Sa-kartvel-o “the land of the Kartvelebi”.

Next to the Kartvelebi live the Ossetians. Ethnic Ossetians speak a language similar to Persian (Farsi). But in the Soviet Union 1991 divorce settlement, it was broken up into North and South with North Ossetia given to Russia and South Ossetia given to Sakartvelo. Ever sensitive to names, Georgian see the use of the word "north" in the title North Ossetia as misleading. In their eyes, the Russia owned North Ossetia is the only Ossetia. Georgia prefers to call South Ossetia by either the ancient name of Samachablo or, more recently, Tskhinvali region.

If given the choice, Ossetians would probably rather be free of both Russia and Georgia. But that is the least likely outcome. Georgia has sovereignty in its favour and the cosying up with NATO. But pro-Western Georgian President Saakashvili has overplayed his hand. An actual war in South Ossetia or Abkhazia would mean disaster for Georgia. Both republics have been defacto independent nations since the 1990s. Russia has more natural sympathy among the local population and is more powerful locally. In this new cold war theatre, Russia will now use the Ossetian excuse to dismiss Saakashvili as a bargaining chip to withdraw.

But the media’s attention will be more on Beijing than Tbilisi. Amusingly, one media may have given the impression the Georgia at risk was in the US’s deep south, though when I checked the source AFP story this evening, the Google map was even more bizarrely pointed to Brno in the Czech Republic. For now Saakashvili must cut his losses, consolidate his country's fragile growth, address local abuses such as police brutality, and hope his connections with NATO will stop Russia from invading. Meanwhile, back in Beijing, Stephanie Rice’s exploits will be honoured with an Australian postage stamp.

Pressure groups condemn Chinese media tactics on eve of Olympics

The French-based media watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) made an unauthorised radio broadcast into Beijing just hours before the Olympic opening ceremony. The activist group say they used miniaturised transmitters and a home-made antenna to broadcast on an unused FM frequency. They aired 20-minute program in Mandarin, English and French and listeners heard Chinese human rights activists urging government to relax state control of the media. RSF secretary-general Robert Ménard also spoke on the program which began at 8:08am local time exactly 12 hours before the opening ceremony.

In the broadcast Robert Ménard called on the Chinese Government to respect free speech. He said China refused to issue visas to ten RSF members but this has not stopped them from making themselves heard in Beijing. Menard claimed it was the first non-state radio station to broadcast in China since the Communist Party took power in 1949. "Reporters Without Borders devised and carried out this protest in a spirit of resistance against state control of the media,” he said.

Another journalist advocacy body, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) expressed their concern that China was refusing permission for an American-Tibetan journalist to attend the Games. They say Dhondup Gonsar, an American citizen of Tibetan ethnicity who works for the U.S. government-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia (RFA), has not yet received press accreditation from Olympic organisers. Gonsar is currently in a hotel in Hong Kong, waiting for his papers to enter China. “The IOC (International Olympic Committee) has promised RFA that two of our reporters could cover the Games. I don’t understand why I have not gotten my IOC accreditation and am not allowed to cover the Games,” Gonsar told CPJ. “Maybe it has something to do with my ethnicity as a Tibetan.”

Their broadcast came as Human Rights Watch weighed in claiming a sharp increase in abuses in human rights and media freedom directly linked to China’s preparations for the games. They pointed to several examples including the intimidation and arrest of protesters against forced evictions, protesters against demolitions, harassment of foreign media in the wake of the Llasa riots, and a crackdown on Beijing’s “undesirables”. Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch said China and the IOC have wasted a historic opportunity to use the Beijing Games to make progress on Chinese human rights. “That failure has damaged the prospects for a legacy of enhanced media freedom, greater tolerance for dissent, and respect for the rule of law,” she said.

Staffordshire University’s Professor John Herbert says that the media in China is a branch of government and that is how politicians see it. China’s newspapers are all state owned and virtually all printed material is first scrutinised by Communist Party officials. Prior to the handback of Hong Kong, the Xinhua news agency acted as a defacto Chinese embassy employing hundreds in news-gathering and intelligence functions. Herbert says China has a habit of increasing their grip on the media in times of sensitive anniversaries such as the founding of the People’s Republic, the Tibetan uprising and the Tiananmen Square massacre. The Olympics is no different. In these times, says Herbert, vigilance intensifies and journalists are ordered to pay particular attention to social order and political stability.

Torch Relay protests: The Olympics and politics

London police are still reeling after being taken unawares by the ferocity of the anti-Beijing protests during yesterday’s chaotic Olympic Torch Relay event. The flame survived a 50-km obstacle course of lurching demonstrators, people attempting to grab the torch, an unexpected protective trip on a double-decker bus and even a fire extinguisher all in wild unseasonal snowy weather. Police forced the flame carriers onto a double-decker bus in Fleet Street when about 100 protesters tried to seize it. They arrested 35 people, two of whom, Martin Wyness and Ashley Darby, tried to put out the flame with a fire extinguisher. "China has no right parading the Olympic torch through London,” said Wyness and Darby in a statement. “The relay... is nothing more than an elaborate propaganda tool to cover its appalling human rights record.”

The flame arrives in Paris today and police are gearing up for further protests. The flame will be protected by 3,000 officers variously kitted out in riot vehicles, on motorbikes, on skates and in jogging gear. Paris police aim to keep the torch in a safe “bubble” with French torchbearers encircled by several hundred officers. French torchbearers will be encircled by several hundred officers, some in riot police vehicles. Pro-Tibetan activists are refusing to reveal their plans to counteract the “bubble”. The head of Reporters Without Borders, Robert Menard promised protests would be "spectacular". Menard was arrested at the flame-lighting ceremony in Greece last month.

The official torch relay site quoted a Beijing Olympic official who strongly criticised the attempt by “pro-Tibet independence” activists to sabotage the torch relay event in London, as an obvious act of defying the Olympic spirit. The Pro-Tibetan activists were placed in quotes as if to say that Tibetan independence was not their real agenda. The unnamed official went on to say that “the act will surely arouse the resentment of the peace-loving people, and is bound to fail”.

But others are not so sure it will fail. The president of Norway’s Olympic committee and Confederation of Sports (NIF) has publicly called on the IOC to consider halting the Relay. NIF president Tove Paule says the torch relay is supposed to be a symbol for peace and joy, and finds it sad when this happens. She is in Beijing this week, attending the General Assembly of national Olympic committees, and says she saw how the Chinese TV transmissions from London were cut when the demonstrations began. She fears that demonstrations will continue as the torch relay progresses.

These fears are shared elsewhere. San Francisco is the only US leg of the relay. Last week the city passed a resolution critical of China's human rights record and encouraged city Mayor Gavin Newsom to accept the flame with "alarm and protest" when it arrives. Local Chinese community members say they are dismayed that what should be a celebration of the strong cultural, historic and economic ties between San Francisco and China will be disrupted by political demonstrations. It is really an insult to the people of China and Chinese Americans, said Ling Chi Wang, professor emeritus of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley. “None of them even thought about consulting the Chinese community."

Today Kevin Rudd announced Australia's only leg of the Olympic Torch Relay in Canberra is to be shortened due to security concerns. The ACT Government has modified the route, following requests from Federal Police, the AOC and the Chinese Embassy for greater security. ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope says it would be regrettable if violence became the focus of the event. "It would be an enormous regret should it be over shadowed by demonstrations, by very overt and physical expressions of security police, riot squads, helicopters in the air,” he said. "It's not exactly what we had hoped for in relation to the torch relay."

It is ironic that the Olympic torch relay is treated with such reverence as it owes its existence less to ancient Greece and more to Nazi Germany. The torch relay is an example of what Eric Hobsbawm called an “invented tradition”. While different origins are claimed in various torch races held during the eighth and fourth centuries BC it was never part of the ancient Olympiad.

The modern tradition was invented by Dr Carl Diem, a German Olympic scholar who had a similar romantic worldview to modern Olympic founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin. Diem was the planner behind the proposed 1916 games in Berlin which were cancelled due to World War I. It was Diem’s idea to institute the torch relay for the 1936 Games in Berlin commencing with a flame lighting ceremony at Olympia in Greece to reflect the burgeoning glory of Hitler’s regime. While China says the Games should not be politicised, the fact is they have always been reflections of national prestige for the hosts. As the London and Paris protesters know only too well, the Olympic Games is pure politics.

Tibet braces for Chinese crackdown

In an announcement that has the sinister ring of Orwellian Newspeak, China claims it has shown “great restraint” in its attempt to crush the riots in the Tibetan capital Lhasa. But while the Chinese-appointed governor of Tibet asserted no guns were used against protesters in the capital, troops flooded into neighbouring areas to enforce control after violent protests. And Lhasa itself faces a midnight ultimatum for protesters to give themselves up or face tougher punishment.

Tibet’s governor Champa Phuntsok promised leniency to those who turned themselves in before the day’s end while threatening harsh consequences for those who don't. He also claimed that the total death toll was 16 so far, a figure greatly disputed by Tibetans exile groups who say over a hundred have died. The governor blamed supporters of the Dalai Lama for the protests. Meanwhile the Dalai Lama himself has condemned what he called "cultural genocide" in his homeland and called for an international investigation.

Tibet’s Prime Minister in exile Samdhong Rinpoche said that hundreds have died since violence broke out a week ago. He told reporters in the Indian hillside home of the government in exile, Dharamshala, that they had requested the international community and the UN send a delegation to Tibet to investigate the claims. China rejects these charges, saying today that 13 "innocent civilians" were killed by “Tibetan rioters” during violent protests in Lhasa, and that it did not use lethal force to quell the rioting.

With western media banned from Tibet, it has been difficult to verify competing claims. The only outside journalist still in Lhasa is The Times’ James Miles. He says that all is quiet at the moment after two days of deadly riots and arson attacks, with the people of Lhasa lying low ahead of the midnight deadline. Rubble and burnt-out vehicles littered the streets, with just an occasional gunshot. Miles said armed troops entered the city on Saturday to quell Tibetan rioters who targeted both Han Chinese and Hui Muslims.

Today, army units drove through the streets parading dozens of Tibetan prisoners in handcuffs with their heads bowed. Soldiers stood behind each prisoner, a hand on the back of their neck to ensure their heads were bowed. Other troops stepped up their hunt for the rioters in house-to-house searches, checking all identification papers. Anyone unable to show an identity card and a household registration permitting residence in Lhasa was arrested. Loudspeakers on the trucks broadcast calls to anyone who had taken part in the violent riots on Friday to turn themselves in.

China is especially sensitive to media reports of the riots as the Beijing Olympics looms on the horizon. Steven Spielberg was the first to use the Olympics card when he resigned as the Games “artistic adviser" in protest over China not using its links with Sudan to help bring an end to violence in Darfur. Now it faces the possibility that a major crackdown in Tibet could unleash calls for a boycott of the Olympics. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband hinted at this recently when he said diplomats should no longer fear that raising human rights with China meant that economic relations would be damaged.

Despite worldwide protests, so far all leades including the Dalai Lama, have stopped short of calling for a boycott of the Games. But International Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Jacques Rogge is worried. Yesterday he said he was “concerned” about the Chinese crackdown and hoped “there can be an appeasement as soon as possible.” There is little doubt that Rogge’s real concern is the possibility that Western nations might skip his showpiece event in Beijing in August. Saying that the IOC was "in favour of the respect of human rights", Rogge rejected the idea of a boycott saying it would only penalise athletes and would not solve anything. What Rogge know is that the Games offers Tibet its best chance to squeeze compromise from Beijing.

China builds Everest highway

China has announced it will begin building a highway to Everest Base Camp which is expected to be ready in time for the Olympic torch relay next year. The road will replace a rough 108km track. The new road has attracted controversy due to the decision to include Tibet in the torch relay.

The new road will cost $20 million. The work will commence next week and will take four months to complete. China said the new highway would become a major route for tourists and mountaineers. The road will stretch from the foot of the mountain to a base camp at 17,000 metres. The new road will be a paved "highway fenced by undulating guardrails."

In April, China deported five American tourists after they demonstrated for a free Tibet at the base of Mount Everest. The five unfurled banners at a base camp calling for Tibet’s independence. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the five were detained for "carrying out illegal activities aimed at splitting China" and that they had been expelled according to Chinese law. An official for their group, Students for a Free Tibet, originally said four people were detained, but later said a fifth person who was transporting videotape also had been held. The five were expelled after being held for two days.

The demonstration occurred after China announced its grand plans for the torch relay which will be a 137,000 km event taking 130 days and will cross five continents in its journey from Olympia in Greece to Beijing. The highlight of the event is the plan to scale the world’s highest peak. But in order to reach Everest, the relay must pass through Tibet.

China invaded Tibet in 1950 and the country’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, lives in exile in India having fled his homeland in 1959. The Tibetan government in exile and China disagree over when Tibet became a part of China, and whether this incorporation into China is legitimate. The Chinese date their ownership of the Himalayan region from the time of Kublai Khan in the 13th century.

But Tibet was ruled by secular dynasties for three hundred years after the fall of the Yuan dynasty. The earliest Dalai Lama, Gendun Drup, lived in the 15th century and was officially the head of Tibet’s government. China remained an important presence and exacted tribute from the Lhasa government, backed up by the occasional armed incursion.

A British expeditionary force led by Francis Younghusband invaded in 1904 and fixed the border between Tibet and India. However they also recognised the suzerainty of China over Tibet. The country’s status remained ambiguous until Chairman Mao’s Red Army marched into Lhasa in 1950 and crushed the weak Tibetan Army. The last uprising occurred in 1959 which China crushed forcing the current Dalai Lama into exile.

While the Olympic road may have mostly symbolic meaning, China has a strong course of integration with Tibet encouraging mass immigration of Han Chinese to dilute the Tibetan majority. By October 2005, China had spent $26 billion on a railway linking the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, with the north-western province of Qinghai. China says the line will promote the development of impoverished Tibet.

China is now forcing nomadic Tibetan herders to settle in towns to clear land for development, leaving many unable to earn a living. Herders have been forced to slaughter herds of yaks, sheep and goats without compensation. Chinese authorities claimed the changes were a response to overgrazing by Tibetan herds that was causing erosion and soil loss. But one man affected by the settlement said "they are destroying our Tibetan (herder) communities by not letting us live in our area and thus wiping out our livelihood completely”.

on drugs and the Olympics

As they are so grandiose entitled, the Games of the XXIX (its gotta be Roman to count) Olympiad occur in Beijing in 2008. An obscene mix of money, communism and circuses with the whole world watching.

Two weeks of voyeurism so acceptable that it is legitimate for a politician to declare the calling of an election during the Olympics as unsporting. Too bloody difficult to concentrate on the issues of two events at the one time, eh? Nobody argues, least of a pusillanimous, poll-driven afternoon of a populist like John Winston Howard.

Who cares about the treatment of illegal immigrants and the international standing of low stocks, as long as we are in the top five in the medal count. Perhaps the standing should be higher as Australia had the third highest number of athletes in Athens behind Greece and USA.

Meanwhile the object of all this fawning attention is an occasionally intoxicating mix of brio and EPO, but mostly a tepid series of dull events in disciplines dimly understood and rarely on view. These are events transformed by the winning status of the competitor.

But lets look at the drugs.. Experts argue over whether throwing athletes out of Games shows that sport is healthy because our system works at catching cheats or that sport is unhealthy because so many are getting caught. But the real question is whether a) drugs work and b) so what if they do. Of course that’s two questions but using a) and b) gives them a certain singularity.

Woolly Days is not totally convinced that drugs work because lets face it, the majority of events have been won by non-cheats, n’est ce pas? And therefore you’d argue that drug cheats haven’t done all that well and therefore what is the point of banning them.

Or, you’d say that, in that case there have been a lot more winners in recent times who were drug users of some kind and did not get caught. In which case, it is obviously widespread and accepted so again, why ban it?

It seems only logical to conduct double-blind tests on both the efficacy of the drugs and a study of their long-term consequences. But the latter cannot rule the former as people will simply become impatient and take it if they see obvious and quick material benefit. That way, those who make that choice have only themselves to blame.

In any event, it is best to let the people decide. The brush has already tarnished the product. Just as the move away from amateurism was frought with difficulty but ultimately successful, the move to an open drug policy will be equally accepted. We chose whatever chemicals we want to give us a competitive advantage but we freely accept the end consequences of our actions.

Such a method would eventually sponsor a health related focus on drugs, their purity and their problems.