Did anyone else see the opening ceremony as a reinforcing technique of China to show how big there population is? With Chinas influence raising the Western powers allowing the games to be held in China was a good way to show how backward the country really is but that stadium was the shit. I probably should put this in HB but it sounds more like a conspiracy to me.

chinas opening ceremony was a mix of:
we are awesome
we had a culture long before you
we invented everything important
look at how awesome we are
we are such a cool country
china rules

and it worked, china is cool, and we will never beat their opening ceremony for coolness

Of course it was.
The opening ceremony was just to distract the world from how shitty China really is, and so they can show everybody how 'great' they are.
Fuck those gooks.

Of course it was.
The opening ceremony was just to distract the world from how shitty China really is, and so they can show everybody how 'great' they are.
Fuck those gooks.


What the opening ceremony didn't cover, the news journalists did. I had coffee the other morning and was watching the news - and at least a good 10 minutes (which is a far stretch in televised segments) was devoted to showing aerial shots over China.

If I were a top-notch track runner or swimmer and depended as much on my lungs as I did the muscles in my legs, I'd be toting fresh oxygen around and donning a mask 24/7 while in China.

Expect a bunch of ruckus over the young ex-Volleyball player's parent who lost his life in China during a random stabbing. It was definitely a tragedy, but it's going to suck seeing the news cover it as though random stabbings don't just happen every day right here on our own soil. Those who initially criticized the Olympic Committee of settling on Beijing will try to throw that in to lend more credence to their arguments.

Overall, I thought the opening ceremonies were pretty fantastical.

post

So are you for, or against the Olympics in China?

So are you for, or against the Olympics in China?

Whatever do you mean? It's not something we vote on as citizens, the International Olympic Committee makes that decision and I seriously doubt what the American public exclusively wants is going to always happen. No doubt there's a huge bureacracy behind it, and no doubt that the committee panders to whatever suits their organization best, be it financially or due to public relations pressures.

I don't give a shit about the host country, the Olympics is about the athletes, and their remarkable skill in their respective sport. I'm sure all the athletes probably would have picked a more hospitable host country if they had the ultimate say on it, but they don't. They just wanted to compete to win.

I don't care much for China. Just another nationalistic country that thinks they're number 1. They should be winning every event considering they have a sixth of the worlds population to draw from. I think the whole reason they got the olympics was so that our governments could propaganda the shit out the fact that they are fascist assholes that are becoming a threat to our way of life. They are the reason resources are expensive. They're driving up everything from steel to oil. We should do the responsible thing and shut down their expansion right now. A billion more people can't live like we do already. If they persist, they will cause a world wide economic crash, which Will lead to war over the means to secure the quality of life they want, and we want to Keep. Then again, isn't a reason to go to war and cut them down What We want?

i really enjoyed the opening ceremony, cant see the brits topping it. but the rest will be boring.

They should be winning every event

They are.

Well, as for me I thought the ceremony was pretty impressing, and also it was a good way to introduce other cultures to the chinesse. They showed people watching it a bit of their history in a fun way, plus some things were very spectacular.
I think that, apart from the ceremony, the Olympics are fake, since China is going to have all the referees in favour.

chinas opening ceremony was a mix of:
we are awesome
we had a culture long before you
we invented everything important
look at how awesome we are
we are such a cool country
china rules

and it worked, china is cool, and we will never beat their opening ceremony for coolness

No expense spared stage-managed propaganda (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/olympics/article4540907.ece), every last bit of it.

Personally I think the British 2012 olympics opening ceremony should accept the shitty position of the UK in the international pecking order, but carry the underlying message that "It doesn't matter how many gold medals we don't win, if it wasn't for our glorious Empire many of you savages would still be living in mudhuts and throwing spears at each other".

Just to piss people off.

But coming back to China though it looks like apart from using the Olympics as a human-rights smokescreen, those crafty slant eyes are having to cover up a few nasty social blemishes (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1045764/Rounded-torture-camps-undesirables-China-doesnt-want-see.html) in the process. And combined with the europolitical shitfest going down in Georgia, I think it's working - no one is going to care much about electrodes up the asses of Tibetan demonstraters once this massive show is over.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XDU3ePlyH8

I preferred the closing ceremony. I cried a little.