Yes they have begun amidst great festivities. They are designed to be the greatest olympics ever and are to showcase china's strength as a global power in everything especially sports.

And even though the games have just begun, they already have taken the gold in several events.

The first big event they took the gold in was - crushing peaceful protests. Though this was hotly contested, with several others emulating china's model and some even trained with china like Myanmar, Sudan etc china took the gold in this event. The others may pose challenges in the years to come.

The next lesser known event was political imprisonment. This also was a fiercely contested event but again china prevailed.

The third event was in industrial pollution. The real only competetion here that was in contention was china. They took the gold easily and even measured against historical all time references, were still in the lead.

Then came the prisoner labor event. China took gold here, and the USA came in a distant 4th. For that honor, they were given an aluminum medal. It was also an unusual rectangular shape but its large 12 inch by 6 inch size was impressive as was the glow at night paint on it and embossed lettering.

After that came the big event of the day, Opressive regime support. Once again china walked away with gold here, mostly what they had mined out of sudan and zaire and other oppressive regimes as payment for helping to crush protests by slaughtering unarmed protesters.

The biggest prize of all could well be the next one. Currency manipulation. This has lead to chinese goods being cheaper than the dirt needed to bury them when they broke, and effectively china has buried the competetion in this event. They were given a made in china gold medal, which they threw in the river in disgust. The athletes were then beaten by the military who declared that they didn't have permissions to be at the river or to throw the medals in the river. That was enough to satisfy all the world leaders present.

In addition chineese also have won gold medals at sensoring the press, strip mining the countries in africa, neglecting its citizens in natural disasters, propogating authoritrianism etc etc etc.

The one event which didn't work so well for china even though china has the advantage here is the kidnapping and imprisonment of Jack Bauer. Upon hearing that Jack Bauer has been taken prisoner by the chinese, President Bush wowed to fight back. When pointed out that Jack Bauer is a TV character, and that actual actor is at home in canada, president bush simply remarked Canada is our NATO ally, we will fight for him.
So there china, take our TV agent prisoner and we'll be very very mad. Other than that, carry on. Love that Kung bo chicken.
Cool.
Buddha.

lol

wait, no, it's correct, and not good.

there was one event omitted:

"Going over the seas and destroying another country, toppling it's government, killing thousands of it's citizens and then stealing it's oil"

guess who ?

dunno, it wasnt us, we killed the nme. no clean war was ever fought anywhere. meh i f%$king hate war too , and we didnt get any oil out of it, so idk who youre referring to 
but to answer your question, i believe it was nazi germany during WW2. see nowadays teh oil companies make roughly 8% profit. with great expenditures, the govt on the other hand, makes 3 times that much roughly w/o spending a dime to obtain it.
anyhoo back on track [/threadjack]

Spot-on assesment Buddha.
Whilst the world was watching the opening ceremony and world leaders were sucking-up to Bejing (Our was opening the Edinboro' book festival - at least he got that right) Russia invades Georgia, started off denying it but the news pix of Russian Tanks and aircraft made that a tad difficult for them.
Georgia says they are in a state of war with Russia and they are bringing their troops back from Iraq to help defend their homeland - whatever happened to the "New world order" and the "peace dividend" I wonder.
We may not think this affects us much in the west but the region has two pipelines for oil and natural gas coming from the world's third largest reserves, the big thing about these pipelines is that they avoid both Russia and Iran which makes them fairly importand to both Europe and USA.
In the meantime China is crushing domestic partisan freedom groups in the Moslem west of China, the people of Tibet and just about anyone who thinks voting for leadership might actually be an idea worth looking at.
Seems like the world's old comunist bad guys are also the new capitalist bad guys.

I wonder who will be paying to sort this lot out in the long term - same old same old I recon.

Unfortunately m8

Too true. Do you ever find yourself wondering if the worlds guna last long enough for you to extract a good life out of it before you die. Seems like the only way is down at the moment and its doing nothing but picking up pace. The only thing were actually accomplishing together in the greater scheme of things is finding ways to get off this rock. ]


p.s. anyone found a copy of the opening ceremony (not a f%$king leaked footage of some dress rehearl) the actual one. As i missed it...

 

Awesome 

Oooo Cal ... you been watching that Georgia - South Ascetia - Russia horror too.
WTF ... Russia claims they are their citizens and they are going in to defend them ... what sorta crap is that, if they are russian citizens, they need to be given a warning to leave saying Georgia is a dangerous place to them. I cant believe the whole freaking world is blinded by the olympics ... Russia found the perfect blind spot to execute this little manouver. Poor Georgia, its gonna get crushed. I think we are going to see a slow grab of the break away russian states atleast the ones of strategic importance and maybe a return to communism. And china has just found a way to make communism more acceptable to their best trading partners.
Georgia should have been inducted into NATO. Anyway, NATO cant do sheite, they are spread too thin in Iraq/Afganisthan. This BS is just a cheap trick with a big pay off.
Cool.
Buddha.

Its sorta like broadcasting bad news in another channel during american idol.
I tell you, we're run by monkeys.
Cool.
Buddha.

the world is run by monkeys lol. heh russias "citizens are in essence" in a foreign country, htey can leqave if need be.but russia is no longer the weakling it has been in years past ( post soviet)