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Hacker Uncovers Chinese Olympic Fraud
SkeptOlympics writes "A new chapter in the ongoing controversy surrounding China's women's gymnastics team opened today, as search engine hacker stryde.hax found surviving copies of official registration documents issued by China's General Administration of Sport of China. The incriminating documents, expunged by censors from the official site and from Google's document cache, still appear in the document translation cache of Chinese search giant Baidu, here (1) and here (2), showing the age of one of China's gold medal winning gymnasts to be 14 instead of 16, the minimum age for competition presented on her government-issued passport. Now that official government documentation is available, how long will the IOC be able to keep a lid on this scandal?" I imagine the answer is "Forever."
China has already taken their official stance. They just don't care about the rules and don't care what other people think about it.
The IOC are making themselves look pretty scummy by association at the moment. They seem complicit in various pieces of fraud and dodgy dealings, and perfectly willing to help cover everything up.
But then I've never held them in that high a regard anyway. They're a business and they make the world's governments beg like puppydogs to be allowed to hold their games.
Frankly I find the whole thing to be something of a joke, and an incredible waste of money.
Why is there a minimum age to begin with? I think if a 14 year old can compete at the level of those a few years older, she should be allowed to. Is the age requirement only in gymnastics? Wasn't Michael Phelps 15 in his first Olympics in 2000?
Easy, it depends on how many millions the chicoms pour into their private bank accounts. The IOC is the biggest joke in all of sports.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Most of the girls on the Chinese team don't look like they've finished puberty - childish faces, no hips, scrawny. Even for Chinese, these athletes would be extreme cases if they were even close to their 'official' age. Cheng Fei is the only one that does. I can't wait to see what they look like in 3 or 4 years.. I guarantee they will all be taller, heavier, and curvier.
Even if nobody is going to admit anything it's nice to see what everybody suspected in black and white.
Nobody from the IOC is going to say a word about this before they've left China. It would be rather foolhardy to do otherwise.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
is this seen as a scandal the world over, or just in America?
This is a world-level scandal. Look at the awards the illegal gymnasts have won, think of the other competitors who followed the rules and finished one place out of medal contention. China is making a mockery of was once a good thing. Does China even know how much of a fool they look to the rest of the world with their stance on human rights, privacy and now even this, cheating at the very olympic games that are supposed to be showing how superior they are? If anything, China is proving just how corrupt their whole system of government has become. People's Republic my arse. As if the people have a say anymore.
Bearded Dragon
I believe it's called waterboarding in the Bush administration.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Who didn't assume the Chinese would "cheat to win" at least a few times in this Olympics? They want to dazzle the world and win as many medals as possible. One has to assume they'll resort to unsavory tactics as long as plausible deniability exists.
On another Olympics note, does anyone else think there have been an unusually high number of errors in the technical events this year? Perhaps I just wasn't watching that closely in previous years, but I thought there have been an inordinate number of falls (off balance beams), poor landings and other substantial technical failures by the competitors. We've had outstanding performances by the likes of Phelps and Bolt, but otherwise there's been a lot of sucking by these elite athletes.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Oh, yes, the media should give the same preference to Iraq news over the Olympics that is demonstrated by such responsible, independent organizations like Wikipedia.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Google doing some proactive clean up for their new overlord China.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
People in many western countries have an expectation that governments and businesses behave in a mostly honorable manner. Chinese have no such expectation as citizens of a one party communist government. History, if the party decides, will be changed, and changed, and then changed again in order to match the truth of The Party.
Was the name of that poor sysadmin Winston?
That doesn't mean that Google modified the cache, it just means that the cached version has been modified.
Recall that Microsoft Office applications do not always remove deleted data, and Google's search engine operates on the raw data in a file (which means that Google will return search results that seem less than obvious if you just look at a rendered copy of the file... something search engine spammers find handy). That means if someone in China deleted that row from the spreadsheet, it would still show up in Google's search.
Shame on us for allowing the games in China. As a nation they deserve only disgrace and isolation.
Maybe the cache was updated after the change was made in the linked document? Oh wait, a corporation and China in the same sentence! Evil it is!
No. Everyone with a TV or radio knows that Phelps won 8 medals, when the next season of Stuck-On-An-Island-With-A-Film-Crew starts, and how the evil gas companies are making gazillions of dollars at our expense.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
That's strange. Fortunately, we can click on "View as HTML" in the Google cache and see it. However, even though the Google search results indicate that He Kexin is listed in the spreadsheet, when you view Google's cached version, her name no longer appears.
So much for don't be evil...
He is wrong, the google search results in his own screen shots only indicate that the number 1994 is in the spreadsheet. In fact, the blogger is being deliberately deceiving because when you view the actual cache it explicitly tells you that the girl's chinese name is only found in other documents that link to the spreadsheet. It is right there at the top of the page, but his screenshots only show the middle of the page.
See for yourself
It is far more likely that baidu is more out of date than google - i.e. the last time google spidered that website, the girl's info had already been wiped so google cached a more recent version of the file while baidu had not yet re-spidered that site and thus still has an older copy in their cache.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Speaking narrowly to the issue of rule-making and rule-enforcement in general, and ignoring he question of the truth of the specific allegations in this specific case:
Any rule not applied fairly is a risk to equal competition. Just because you don't know whether a rule introduces a bias on the outcome does not mean that it doesn't.
For example, let's suppose some country (any country) did have an athlete participating in an event contrary to some rule. It doesn't matter if it's age or drugs or taste in music. If some number of countries select from their entire population and others select from only the people in the approved group, then whether or not any given country was able to show its most competitive face is purely a question of whether the excluded group contains the most competitive person.
Let's suppose the games are closed to anyone who likes hip hop music, for example. Why might it matter if some hypothetical Foozania were to field a swimmer who secretly likes hip hop music when the other countries voluntarily held back? Absent Michael Phelps (we all know from US airtime allotments that there are not really any other swimmers of note in the US), who would be voluntarily withheld because of his professed like of hip hop, the Foozanian swimmer's scores might seem very good. By your reasoning, which seems to amount to absence of competition, he deserves his medal fair and square, right? But if the absence of competition can be caused by uneven application of rules, that's where the problem comes.
But beyond this, there is also a human rights question: Are there sports in which people are pressured at a younger and younger age to get into the sport, before they are ready to make a free choice? Are there sports in which the toll the sport takes on the athlete is damaging before a certain age? These are complex questions of ethics that it seems fair for the Olympic committee to at least consider, so you can understand why there might be such rules. And once there are such rules, my examples above hopefully show why they must be applied fairly in order for the Olympics to mean anything at all.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Dunno if that's good or bad, when the public outcry about a senseless war is considered worse than the outcry of a prez cheating.
I vote for good.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Where's the hacking part come in? Give him credit for his search and chinese language skills but hacking?
Part of the reasons the IOC chose China was to shine a spotlight on their censorious, opaque and human-rights-violating ways. The idea being that, if the Chinese government gets enough egg on their face, they might decide anything is better than being humiliated/embarrassed in front of the world. At most, that high wattage bulb is going to be shining for another week.
If that was the plan, it backfired big time. What remains of the public outcry against the human rights violations in China? Did you hear anything about it? All I hear is gold medal here, incredibly tight finish there, new world record... Do you hear anything about China and human rights or censorship in any news? Some brief tempest in the teapot before the games, when reporters were complaining that they didn't have full internet access, but since?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Part of the reasons the IOC chose China was to shine a spotlight on their censorious, opaque and human-rights-violating ways.
Actually, it's much more likely that the IOC chose China because of the rather large bribes which were presented to their selection committee.
That IS how they operate after all. Free dinners, big parties, free alcohol, and free jewelry for their wives or cars for the husbands so they can honestly say "No, I didn't get anything".
I know what you're thinking, and yes, the jewelry should be worth more than the cars if you want to be the winner...
But maybe I'm just being cynical.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
...that I think is most important:
Olympic level competition is more a JOB than a sport.
And many countries, China among them, would have no compunction about working a child mercilessly if she shows talent and the ability to gain her nation the prestige of a gold medal.
It's not, IMO, as much about unfair competition. It's about having standards as a modern society that a person should have free will and children should be protected from exploitation. The cutoff has to be made somewhere, and right now that cutoff is 15.
It's not that there's no room left, it's just that they vary only by degree.
The only reason we don't mention Saddam in the same breath is that he wasn't any good at hiding and/or whitewashing his crimes. Bush, on the other hand, has been terrifyingly effective.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I'm not sure I'd agree with stripping the gold from the girls. They gave the performance to earn it. They shouldn't lose it because their government is shady.
The better solution would be disqualification from the next Olympics for those events for China. Let the winners this year keep their metals.
"Does China even know how much of a fool they look to the rest of the world with their stance on human rights, privacy and now even this, cheating at the very Olympic games that are supposed to be showing how superior they are?"
In actuality, no. They took a recent poll that showed that
a) the Chinese people were quite happy with the direction their government is taking, and
b) Overwhelmingly the Chinese people thought that the rest of the world views china "favorably" of "very favorably".
Some of this explains the seeming disconnect between the Chinese actions and their astonishment at the world's reaction. It's already turning into nationalism. That, along with the excess of young men in the country, is going to lead to interesting times for China and the world in the next few years.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Off-topic but it's S. Ossetia and while I am in no way taking sides, the Russian response was directed at Georgia's military action after Georgia refused to let South Ossetia's action of breaking away and claiming indepdence go unpunished.
This (Russian invasion of Georgia) is not even close to what happened in Iraq (full scale invasion by US led forces with a deceitful claim about WMDs that UN led inspectors said Iraq had none of).
Would you please cite your sources where you claim "Part of the reasons the IOC chose China was to shine a spotlight on their censorious, opaque and human-rights-violating ways.". Also what's the rest of the reason?
I believe it's called waterboarding in the Bush administration.
Calm down, Guardian reader. For all it's faults, the US is the most staunch defender of free speech. No one is getting tortured for reporting truth to power on US soil.
Now, now. Don't stoop to false dichotomy. Both China and Bush are a disgrace. Bush may not be a tyrant, but I'd argue that his offenses in the realm of human rights differ from China's primarily in scale, not in degree. Bush limits himself to a few hundred Gitmo inmates (or so we hope), China oppresses much larger segments of the population. I'm fairly sure that a human rights travesty remains a travesty even if it only affects a single person.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
LOL. Oh you think what he has done for America is so great? In comparison to America's political rapists of the past, him, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and the Republicans are the biggest corporate sellouts to foreign interests and oil barons that we have seen to date. True. No Hitlers. They just have decided to spy on us, try to get us to turn our neighbors in by started up programs like the soviet police did, listen in on our phone conversation, cease property without reason at airports, bus stations and border crossing and will require you to 'show your papers' on demand or be arrested.
So maybe not HITLER but very Hitler-esque.
OK, so your argument is not Godwin, but very Godwin-esque.
The point here is not to argue for or against the Bush administration. The topic is China cheating in the Olympics and using their "Great FireWall of China" to cover it up.
Attempting to insult the Bush administration shows that some are so blinded by their hatred that they can't see anything at all. They try to justify their hatred by exaggerating policies to the point of outright lies. An example would be your "papers please" argument. Has anyone EVER asked you for your "papers" without just cause? Do you even HAVE any "papers"? If not, then you need to check your integrity. Your hatred has blinded you to the truth.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I don't have to admit that. The left-wing spite for Cheney and his faithful VP Bush is pretty well-deserved and not hard to understand -- we're now fighting two wars in the Middle East, one of which should have ended long ago and the other of which shouldn't have started. The American dollar is weaker than American beer. One after another Constitutional bound has been overstepped and ignored. I can't imagine an administration doing much worse. (It is important to note that Bush/Cheney does not represent ANY of the best traditional qualities of the Republican party. They aren't Republicans, they're Neocons. Might as well be a party of its own.)
On the other side, I live in Massachusetts, bluest of the blue states, and I don't know anyone who actually thinks Obama is gonna march us into the promised land. I support him because his stated ideas are mostly compatible with mine, and I believe him to be quite politically unconnected when compared with McCain and Hillary. The old political network, on both sides of the aisle, has failed me. I want it gone. Obama represents my best chance of that.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
You don't seem to understand what a cache actually is.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Or, more accurately, his Administration is tyrannical. It's no Genghis Khan, or Caligula, or even Napolean, but between describing the administration as benevolent and thinking first and foremost of the people or as authoritarian and largely out for the ends of a few the latter clearly wins out.
The guy may not be entirely unredeemable, but it is not inappropriate to (constantly!) remind everyone living under his Administration that he ain't no nice guy.
[Ego]out
"Authoritarian" tyranny. China is not ruled by capitalist trends, though they use that as leverage. It is ruled by a strong, centralized political apparatus.
[Ego]out
As a nation they deserve only disgrace and isolation.
I hate to invoke Godwin but sorry I don't recall shame and isolation being to successful when it was used against a reduced and beaten Germany and a ruined Russia after the "Great War". We left those two to simmer after 1918, what happened? The Germans walked all over the French, Isolated England and decided to poke an injured Soviet bear with a hot poker. All isolationist policy ever does is piss people off enough to invoke fervent nationalism. One thing the world does not need is an incredibly nationalistic financial and military giant feeling it is owed something. And owed enough to take it by force.
People should learn from history, especially history that is fairly recent.
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, the lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.- Shelley
"I support him because his stated ideas are mostly compatible with mine"
So you are also a communist and racist?
Have you read his book?
"Hope & Change" - A. Hitler
we're now fighting two wars in the Middle East
What two wars are we fighting? I don't see any declared hostility with any nation.
That is the problem with you lefties, is that you see wars where there aren't any. Wars are going on, Russia Just invaded Georgia. If Russia stays in Georgia permanently, even after hostilities cease, would you say that Russia is at war with Georgia????
Did you say that during the "Cold War" when USSR had puppet states all over the place?
One after another Constitutional bound has been overstepped and ignored.
Well, the Leftists in America are just as bad as the Righties are in this regard. I dare you to own a gun in San Fransisco or DC. When your side ignores the Constitution on some issues, and while protesting the other side for ignoring the Constitution, that is called HYPOCRISY. And whenever a single Judge decides that there is a new "Right", not enumerated in the Constitution, whereby taxes are leveled to provide said right to everyone (I'm talking HEALTHCARE), then you ignore the Constitution.
So, before you start talking about Over stepping the bounds of the Constitution, you better be sure that your views are Constitutional.
The Constitution was framed for a VERY limited scope government. The (D) and (R) are just as bad as each other. Both are for BIG Government. (D) wants to "do it for the children", while the (R) are to protect us from evil doers.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It's sad that people believe that Bush oppresses people just like China. Waterboarding might not be a walk in the park, but it's been applied to three people who were known to be high-level terrorists. We got information from them. I wish it didn't have to be that way, but it's done.
Compare that to China where people who are Falun Gong (a religious movement) get to suffer round-the-clock torture, including mutilation and permanent debilitation, simply to force them to renounce their religious beliefs. I invite you to read up on it, and then tell us how that compares to fake menstrual blood, loud music, and all the other horrible things that go on at Gitmo.
Honestly, it's sad that people can be so utterly ignorant of the realities of this world that they believe George Bush is the epitome of evil.
Do you have ESP?
Actually, I don't know if there's necessarily a difference of scale. It might be, but it's not really necessary.
See, I don't know much about China, but at least in the USSR the age of mass deportations and millions of people in Gulag ended with Stalin. Then it evolved in something cheaper, more subtle and more efficient: the idea that anything you say _might_ be recorded somewhere and _might_ be used against you. Not even necessarily by a visit of the secret police. Sure, it _could_ be the secret police too, but maybe it'll be something else. Maybe you'll never fly out of the USSR ever again, because you can't be trusted to come back. Maybe you'll never get a job past a certain level. Maybe it'll bite you in the arse in some other way. Or maybe noone wrote that in your dossier after all. But you don't know.
And you don't know who's spying and reporting on you. Maybe comrade Piotr is really rabidly against the government and you could start building a resistance together. But maybe he's an agent provocateur.
They actually had very few political prisoners past a point. The people held themselves in line admirably, given that Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
I wouldn't be surprised if they actually had less political prisoners than the USA has in gitmo. The actual gulag was more kept as a reminder of what _could_ happen if you really cross the line too far, than as something to be used immediately and lots. Sorta like how the nukes are more for threat value, than actually used in wars.
And I find that the USA had been taking an eerily similar direction during the Bush years. The whole surveillance mania, and the repeated leaks about what else they monitor and try to connect (including laughable stuff like data-mining the grocery purchases for people who buy arab food), it's like they actually _wanted_ people to get the idea that someone's watching and they better behave. Even some of the few terrorism trials, it's like they chose the most laughable and/or most suspiciously looking like entrapment. It almost begs thinking that the moral is, beware of who's asking you dubious stuff, he might be an agent provocateur.
Now I'm not saying it's some deliberate conspiracy to leak them. Probably more like not caring what gets leaked. Give enough minions orders to spy left and right, and you can pretty much count on it that some of them will botch it or run to the press. Which can actually be good if that's the message you actually want to give to your population: watch it, we've got our eyes on all y'all.
Look at the other details about the USSR in that list. Flight restrictions for people they don't like? Check. Done in the USA too. Your pool of available jobs might depend on how much of an politically loyal you make yourself seen as? Check. The Bushies politicized half the government departments. Etc.
Gitmo and torture kept as the ultimate stick, where you probably won't land, but you _might_ if you're really undesirable? Check. Same role as the Gulag had post-Stalin.
Not saying that the USA is a perfect equivalent to the USSR dictatorship... yet. But it looks to me like they've been working real hard to push it in that direction. If given more time, I don't doubt that it would have got a lot worse eventually.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What two wars are we fighting? I don't see any declared hostility with any nation
Are you serious? Are you trying to imply that because there hasn't been a technical, formal declaration incorporating the word war that we're supposed to believe you have no awareness of the War in Afghanistan or the War in Iraq?
I agree there is far too much devisiveness and name calling when it comes to the 2 "sides", but to pretend there aren't any wars going on is just...well...stupid.
Shame on China for cheating. Athletes have been busted individually cheating in the games (doping, for example). But to see systematic cheating abetted by a government, and to see that cheating result in diminished achievement for deserving athletes of any nation (but to be honest, it stings more to see my countrywomen denied) is a tough thing to bear.
Nastia Liukin is a triple gold medalist and Shawn Johnson is a double gold medalist as far as I'm concerned.
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Nice argument but a rule is a rule. If you are going to commit fraud in order to get your way, and possibly create an uneven playing field while doing so, then you should suffer the penalty, period. There's nothing meaningless about this argument. Having kids compete at an Olympic level before they've even had a chance to properly form emotionally is certainly not a good thing. If you want to participate you participate under the same rules as everyone else and the message that needs to be made clear is that committing fraud to do so is not going to be tolerated. Has nothing to do with beliefs or western "mores". If they want it changed they can make a proposal and have it approved or not, end of story.
I actually think it's to embrace the idea that not sending children to the Olympics is a value we find important, and a rule we will adopt for ourselves - in our regional or country Olympic Committees - and not attempt to enforce on other contestants.
Where to begin with a moron such as yourself? The same could be said about steroids. Steroids, like children competing in Olympic-level gymnastics, ruins your body. Our Western philosophy says you shouldn't ruin your body to compete, so according to your logic we should compete without that ruinous aid but allow others to compete with it. This is pure idiocy.
According to you, if snapping the heads off babies and eating their milky insides gave you a 1% edge as an athlete, then what the hell, we should allow countries to do that if it doesn't offend their morals.
What an ass you are.
I guess you'll be fine when Russia decides that greasing up the pommel horse so their competition falls is not against their morals, so that's OK too.
Apparently, mutually agreeing to rules and then fraudulently breaking them and then repeatedly lying about it is not always wrong to you. It's always wrong to me.
History tells us a story that is quite interesting in this regard. Traditional democrats are for larger government and Republicans are for smaller government (keep in mind this is the federal government). Today I see Obama and Mcain as problems. Obama is most likely using focus groups to appeal to swing voters unconscious desires in a new president (hope). MCcain is sitting on top of the absolutely retarded Fiscal conservative christian campaign. Both support the patriot act. They are giant logical fallacy machines during debates (as with all politicians these days). I see no light at the end of this election year tunnel.
Eat sleep die
Sys admin's family gets the bill for the 9mm bullet.
Yes, I know, it has supposedly been debunked.
Or, sys admin is now walking a post in the Sunny Happy People's Paradise of Tibet.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I'll give you the whole Thoreau Civil Disobedience thing. I'm pretty much 100% on board there. thats fine for important social and governmental issues. Here is where we diverge. Gymnastics is a sport. Sports have rules. Those rules are for everyone. Don't like the rules, don't play. Do you think the rules of baseball are dumb? Go play cricket. Lots of sports periodically change or tweak the rules. It's not new. If you are caught cheating, then pay the fine, and play by the rules. Otherwise, you might as well go play Calvinball.
At this point, it seems overwhelmingly apparent that the Olympics is simply big business. In your article, the IOC states:
'"My clients, the sponsors and broadcasters are happy with the positive view that the Olympics is about sport and the focus is quite rightly on that," said the IOC's marketing director Timo Lumme.' Yes, that is who their clients are.
I saw a number being tossed around of $1 billion that NBC paid for exclusive broadcast rights. Visa paid hundreds of millions for exclusive credit card rights, to the detriment of the people that actually attend the games, and find they can't use their credit cards.
According to Wikipedia, they made 4 billion from the last Olympics, and they distribute the money throughout the Olympic Movement. As best as I can tell from Google, these are all non-profits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Olympic_Committee#Olympic_marketingAs
My question then is: Where is all the money going? 4 billion dollars is a lot to be spending just on administration, especially when the host countries are the ones paying for infrastructure.
It just doesn't seem to make any sense. It can't all be going to hookers and blow...can it?
Actually we have the age limit because a 12 year old girl has a size to strength ratio that is superior to that of a 16 year old girl. If you saw those Chinese girls you'd know what I am talking about. Compare the bodies of Shawn Johnson or Alicia Sacramone to He Kexin or Yang Yilin. There is no comparison.
That and the incident where their poster golden boy broke down from too much training and his coach said the extreme pressure from the regime was to blame convinces me there is a god up there and he was looking after me for I was not born in China.
If your having not been born in China convinces you there is a god up there, what kind of god is he? He is the sort who lets 1,000,000,000 Chinese born in China and not looking out for them. Yupe, a reeeelly special god.
The way I see it, by the logic of your argument, if I find your existence unreasonable, then I should break the rule that says 'thow shall not kill'.
I guess I probably could have read a bit more before responding:
* Smaller people can rotate/spin faster ..ahem.. new weight in new places and throws off balance
* Lighter weight makes some maneuvers easier
* Bones are more flexible which can help
* Puberty, for women, adds
Not an advantage, but a safety issue:
* Younger bones are more likely to break, resulting in crippling injuries
Maybe they need weight classes for competition, like in boxing?
Speak before you think
What two wars are we fighting? I don't see any declared hostility with any nation.
Oh please. We never officially declared war against Vietnam. Does that mean we weren't at war?
And whenever a single Judge decides that there is a new "Right", not enumerated in the Constitution, whereby taxes are leveled to provide said right to everyone (I'm talking HEALTHCARE), then you ignore the Constitution.
Oh, because if it's not enumerated in the Constitution, it's not a right? Your thinking is exactly the kind that Alexander Hamilton worried the Bill of Rights might foster.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
2. Amongst other reasons, the age requirement is there because children under the age of 16 don't face the same pressures a 16 year old kid faces. This was thoroughly explained by the coach of the U.S. team. When you're 14, in the opinion of the rule makers, you are much more aware that you are competing in a global arena representing your country. When you're younger you see it as a game and you don't have nearly as much pressure.
3. Add this to the way the Chinese treat the U.S. gymnasts, by making them wait for a long time after they are called. It was done by the 'arena authorities' and not the IOC. They give no explanation why. They only do it to the U.S. gymnasts in the final round.
Add all these together and you get a insatiable lust for winning at any cost, not just a willingness to break "bad rules". China will do whatever it takes to win. Rules only apply to the weak [non communist].
http://www.kansascity.com/495/story/747330.html
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/olympics/2008/writers/selena_roberts/08/13/china.gymnasts/?bcnn=yes
14 & practicing or 16 to compete?
if they aren't allowed to compete because they aren't old enough yet-- don't you think if they are olympic hopefuls they are trainig every bit as hard at 14 to do it as a win at 16-- so where is the savings against personal injury?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Speaking as someone with no knowledge of the gymnastics, it seems to me that the sport is just broken and this is a symptom of the problem.
Why is it that when women start developing (gasp!), they are hugely disadvantaged in the world of competitive gymnastics? It seems *that* is the fundamental problem, and it doesn't appear to be a problem that's too difficult to solve. To have a women's sport where the best competitors are the farthest thing from actual women seems silly.
Yes, I understand that with the current gymnastic events it is an advantage to be smaller, lighter, not as curvy, etc. But while we cannot control the woman's figure, of course we can control the sport and its events. Why not choose or create events that aren't hindered by a woman's curves or emphasize artistic moves that prefer a adult's center of mass, rather than a child's, etc.?
If the olympic events naturally favor younger girls, then expect more and more younger girls to compete and succeed. To put a restriction which are contrary to nature the sport itself - you are guaranteed they will be protested and circumvented.
http://www.talknerdy.org
Of course not. Since we're telling heartwarming stories of how the Bush family is so genuine 'cause of anecdotal tales concerning shaking hands with people in wheelchairs, lemme share you a quick yarn about someone *I* know who got severely beaten and hospitalized for the horrible crime of taking pictures of police officers beating up a tiny young woman wearing a purple triangle while yelling sexual epithets.
No one in this country is *ever* oppressed for seeking the truth. CNN would show that, wouldn't it? Go back to sleep. Everything's fine. Our police aren't used as thugs, our military isn't used as thugs, we can't even spell "hypocracy" so surely our dealings with Russia and Georgia and right and just, and there's nothing wrong with China as long as they'll make our $150 sneakers for 3 bucks and buy more Coca-Cola.
The way I see it, it is possible that China is acting within an ethical framework - albeit one that most Western societies don't agree with. From their point of view, they're putting their best athlete forward - and doing so seems natural. The age restriction is something that is there to satisfy Western mores; that children should not be competing at that level. Actually, I think our objection there is rather poorly defined.
Irrelevant. Cheating is cheating. They are aware of the rules and have made a conscious effort to hide their actions - which makes them guilty. They may believe that the rule is bogus but I don't buy for a second that Chinese culture sees deception on the world stage as moral or honorable. If they believe the rule should be changed the only responsible course is to present their case to the IOC. It's been done before (1997).
They could very easily say "Yes, the girl is 14, but she won - the rule is bad." The IOC could take away the gold at that point (would possibly have to), but that is all the more reason that China could give as to why the rest of the world is not as awesome as they are; that they have to take away gold medals from true winners and hide behind some sort of age discrimination.
There are reasons for the rules. In past Olympics, elite competitors consisted almost exclusively of "pixies" -- underweight, prepubertal teenagers -- and concerns were raised about athlete welfare. There must be standards; without them we would see the athlete-health become secondary to winning allowing for further human-rights abuse. Any reasonably insightful individual can see why allowing countries to abuse their citizens for any gain is bad for humanity on all levels. Your perspective obviously condones doping as well - should we allow our athletes to artificially enhance themselves? Should gold-metal winners who cop to doping later not be stripped of their metal? What about when technology becomes advanced enough that we could use robotic implants - should we allow a cyborg to compete in weight lifting if their implants enhance their abilities 1000-fold? Where does it end? Standards.
What is the correct western action? I actually think it's to embrace the idea that not sending children to the Olympics is a value we find important, and a rule we will adopt for ourselves - in our regional or country Olympic Committees - and not attempt to enforce on other contestants. It speaks much louder to say, "We could put forth an underage contestant but we find that unpalatable. Therefore we will act in accordance with our beliefs and put in only older athletes." Of course, the consequence to both ethical actions is fewer gold medals.
I couldn't disagree more. Again, there must be standards. The rules are in place to protect children from the physical abuses of the gymnastic sport - just because the west objected to the age for these reasons doesn't make it less valid. If we were to do away with international standards such as these, what stands in the way of a government abusing its children to find the best? Or doping athlete's? Blah, blah, blah... The objective is to bring the world together under a common standard - not to win at all costs.
The worst part about that is it follows our general trend of failing to get at the root issues that are of true concern; people suffering under an authoritarian regime is of real concern. That regime lying is, well, almost to be expected. Yet, of these two issues, the lie is the thing we will argue endlessly about - and throw our hands up at the actual suffering.
If we allow countries to lie in international games such as this - which is the same as cheating - then we allow and enable them to continue behaving in an objectionable manner. True, in this case, it is the west that is objecting but it goes both ways. We are not saints (See Marion Jones).
I am Jack's smirking revenge.
Amen. +5 insightful (where the fuck are my mod points??)
The thing to debate - in this particular instance - is not the relative 'goodness' or 'badness' of the 16 year old rule, although I do agree with it on a personal level. The fact is that the IOC has the rule, China knew they had the rule going in, they broke the rule, they need to get slapped upside the head.
The girls did a great job and all, but you don't argue the merits of a traffic law while you're driving down the interstate - you go in front of a lawmaker/makers and debate it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Let me just say, right out of the box, I appreciate that you started off with an ad hominem attack. It really supports your position, and lends credence to your rationale.
You are, however, absolutely correct; the same could be said about steroids. We absolutely have a choice to support the use of steroids and the lie to cover it up, or frown on the use of steroids but actively work to not cover it up. Bodies are ruined by steroids, as are lives, and we have a choice to partake in it or not. Everyone else has that same choice.
Where you start to put words in my mouth is the part about snapping off baby heads. (A minor aside; contrary to popular opinion, babies do not have milky insides.) We absolutely should strenuously object, and even take action against - perhaps even boycotting such multicultural events as the Olympics - people who are engaged in harmful activities against other people. This includes athletes who like the taste of baby meat for the 1% edge it gives them, and authoritarian regimes that raise athletes from birth for a specific event. What we should not do is ignore those actions, or the frameworks that allow for them, and instead focus on rules violation.
It is simply unacceptable that the anger here is at the fact that "China broke the rules!" and not at "China is ignoring human rights!" It's entirely wrongheaded, and why those underlying issues are never addressed.
Finally, since you seemed to not be able to catch my original meaning; I do not find that lying about rule breaking is right action. To the contrary, it's not acceptable. There is a value system, though, wherein it is, and the point in that value system wherein I diverge from having any further iota of agreement is where the decision to lie about the rulebreaking occurs.
To spell it out; I don't agree with having kids in these events - but other people, parents, children, athletes and cultures are going to disagree with this. It's a whole big issue that I'm not addressing. I do agree with breaking rules you find unjust. I don't agree with lying about it - and at that point, when you lie about it, you lose your right to claim a morally viable underlying framework.
One final point, because I feel that your straw man argument regarding the Russians can be turned to something worthwhile saying; if you are actively sabotaging other people - well, clearly you are capable of doing that, but it doesn't lend legitimacy to the victory. Therein lies the problem with China; because we're arguing about the lie, we're lending legitimacy to the way they go about the important things by putting pressure on the minor point; the rule breaking that is, at best, only debatable. If Russia were to grease a pommel horse, well, it would be clear and no one (ok, realistically, few) would count the victory legitimate. When we fail to act ethically we lend legitimacy to others acting unethically.
[Ego]out
Comment removed based on user account deletion
[citation needed]
He was genuine. ...
Things like this show me that when people bash someone relentlessly, they often don't know WTF they are talking about. I place you in that group.
Are you seriously trying to argue that because someone is charismatic and gets along well with people in person that they must be "good people" and incapable of doing harm to a country?
Do you realize that you've just described every despot who has ever ruled?
For example, Stalin, Hitler (uh-oh), Mussolini, Mugabe, Marcos, even Sadam - all were or are very charismatic and friendly to the people around them. Just not so friendly to some people whom never got near them.
The Bushes may or may not have been terrible presidents, but charisma and an easy-going nature have nothing to do with their policies and executive decisions.
The more I read Americans talk about the subject the more it sounds like sour grapes. Nobody - I repeat, NOBODY! - has the authority to decide what age the girl is but the Chinese government. There's no such thing as an "officially forged" passport. The ultimate authority that can decide upon such matters decreed the girl is 16. Whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant. Now, is 16 an appropriate age to compete? Maybe not, but I remain convinced that girl herself is very happy with the way things turned out. She's adulated in her country and achieved more than most of us will achieve in a lifetime (no, making babies is not an achievement!). Personally, I find arbitrary ages an aberration. Also, besides extremely naive people, everyone knows fair has never been much of an issue in the Olympics. If you want fair, let them all eat the same things, have access to the same doctors, juice with the same state-of-the-art shots (don't pretend to be surprised) and compete in categories. I am staunchly opposed to the Chinese government's abuse. But this is a non-issue that's being blown out of proportions because...somebody lost a medal. Focus on what the little girl achieved instead of trying to downplay her performance. The medal is China's. Get over it!
Res publica non dominetur
Well, its almost impossible to count the ways that statement is false. For one thing, the concept of honorable can be very different in different places. It reminds me of the Catholic Church's reaction to priest pedophilia scandals. Canon law enjoins the hierarchy against doing anything that would bring the Church into disrepute, so of course that meant they had to cover it up. In case you didn't notice, that was sarcastic. It takes a special kind of blindness to interpret what would otherwise be a useful rule in such a damaging way.
Same thing here. The Chinese authorities used various kinds of trickery in the opening ceremonies. One you might not have heard of is the children representing 55 ethnic minority groups were all Han (Chinese) children dressed up in ethnic costumes. The constant theme of all these various stories is this: they treat keeping up appearances as a critical matter of national prestige, almost national security.
Now, let's move off the culturally relative topic of honor onto firmer ground of administration. The problem with any system in which the bureaucracies are allowed to manage appearances is that the people in those bureaucracies lose their capacity to recognize irony. Bureaucracies are good at handling complexity, but terrible at subtlety. Too many people taking their cues from other people just like them. Too much groupthink. Any reasonably clever individual would have foreseen that the torch relay business was asking for trouble, and that acting surprised and offended about the inevitable protests would play into the hands of the protesters. If you're a tough guy, when somebody kicks you in the groin, you're supposed to ... raise one eyebrow, or laugh it off or something like that. You don't dance around holding your crotch in one hand and pointing an accusing finger with another and shout "unfair!" That tells everyone the protestors hit you in a weak spot, so if you aren't prepared to take it with a grin, you don't offer them the opportunity.
Any reasonably clever individual could figure out that trying to look even better than you could possibly be during the opening ceremonies would end up with people questioning even the bona fide amazing things you do.
Anybody with enough brains to be a top level government planner could figure out that hanging so much national pride and prestige on something like this, and doing it so transparently, is as good as hanging a sign on your national back saying "Kick me!" But you take all those excellent brains, and you embed them in a bureaucracy nobody's allowed to question, that is hermetically sealed from independent thought and touchy about criticism, and those individually excellent brains end up trudging along together, stuck in the groove of groupthink.
The Olympics might have been everything China dreamed for them to be, if the government had grasped one fundamental and ironic fact: you gain national prestige in something like this by doing really well while acting as if it wasn't important at all. The jingoistic, quasi-religious, neopagan ceremony of the Olympics is a trap. The more you act like this is supposed to be proof of national superiority or virility or something, the less you are measured by what you achieve. People start watching for how far you fall short of what you pretend to be.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"I can't imagine an administration doing much worse."
..and by the way, most left-wingers I have met have an immediate negative reaction to anyone that is labeled conservative without bothering to get to know them or ask about their views. My point is do not hate someone because of a label. This might be breaking news to you left wingers but many conservatives, including me, feel let down and betrayed by the current administration as well.
Lincoln imprisoned and silenced thousands of newspaper editors and citizens in the Northern States who went against his war agenda. Lincoln formally suspended the writ of habeus corpus to keep anyone imprisoned that he wanted (dissenters) without trial during the war.
Andrew Jackson directly and publicly defied a Supreme Court ruling that Native Americans could not be forced out of Florida(reference The Trail of Tears). His comment was: "The Supreme Court has ruled, now let them enforce it" and he promptly forced the Native Americans out of Florida.
While I certainly don't condone much of what the Bush administration has done, there are many historically documented examples of many US administrations doing as many or greater wrongs. Your statement is historically ignorant.
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
It actually has more to do with the fact that being smaller makes it easier to perform. Younger, smaller athletes have an advantage. The rule seeks to prevent that advantage from unleveling the playing field.
Rhapsody in Numbers
it's sad that people can be so utterly ignorant of the realities of this world that they believe George Bush is the epitome of evil.
You're absolutely right. Bush is not the epitome of evil.
Aside from getting elected president, I doubt Bush has ever been better than a C+ at much of anything. George Bush is the C+ of evil. The the C+ of lie, cheat and steal. This guy gets a hold of Global Power... and with his C+ of evil all he manages to do is manufacture a small war in a bumfuck country, torture a small handful of people, and swell the ranks of terrorist groups across the globe. Bush hasn't even nuked a city. Nuking a city would rate him at least a B+. Unleashing a genetically engineered racially-targeted plague would get him a solid A+ of evil. Or better yet a racially-targeted plague that also only kills males, so that the women can be spared and "rescued" and impregnated to raise half-white properly Christian babies. THAT would earn him the title Epitome of Evil.
Yep. Bush is not the epitome of evil. Bush is the C+ of evil.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Just for a defense for other Dems, we don't all think Bush Jr is a tyrant. I'm as big a supporter of Obama as anybody and have never, ever been in favor of Bush Jr (even when he had 90% approval) but to call him a tyrant is too much.
I think he probably is a likable enough guy personally, just as Jimmy Carter is. However, Carter should never have been elected president and neither should have Bush Jr. Nice guys shouldn't always be elected president if they don't have a good enough administration around to support them and/or are simply lacking in personal qualities to be president of the US (in Bush Jr's case simply not enough good judgment, in Carter's much the same but in different ways).
I can see where you're coming from there, and don't entirely disagree. Whether the rule is fair or not is ultimately going to come down to the judgment call of whoever makes the rules, and it would appear they've elected to put the "think of the children" aspect up first. I'm not going to make an effort to defend it really.
But, as noted, the problem here is unrelated to the logic of the rules--it isn't a case of a creative new solution to a problem, it's a blatant rule violation in a contest entirely dependent on arbitrary rules.
Even given that the rule might be stupid, if one group is allowed to get away with ignoring it, the contest is skewed unfairly against those who follow it. There's no "fair sporting chance" so to speak against a cheater.
Source please.
Oh, ok. So obviously, it must be happening!
It's a conspiracy I tell you! ... or perhaps it just isn't happening.
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
Only way to break the cartel of (D) and (R) is to ELECT someone who isn't (D) or (R).
And the best way to do that is to elect people who support instant runoff voting.
And what the fuck do you think the "moderate" muslims are going to do when they see jackasses nuking their friends and family? Not to mention the reactions of people who are under the fallout plumes of your "trivial" solution? Your so called solution is childish, simplistic, and completely fails to solve the problem while creating many, many more problems. Or, in short, you're just another stupid fucking dittohead.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
> At this point, it seems overwhelmingly apparent that the Olympics is simply big business
I probably should have been self-aware enough to understand that this is why I'm really, really, not interested in the Olympics, but I have to admit that your comment really opened my eyes. I do know that all of the doping scandals (or whatever you want to call them) also have contributed to turning off my spectator interest in competitive sports in general.
It reminds me of how the behavior of the **AA have turned me off of their commercial offerings, also. Luckily, I still have Slashdot....
You know, I see this every four years and I can't help wondering at it. No matter who the Democratic Presidential candidate is, he or she is always, without fail and regardless of actual record, said to be "the most liberal member of Congress" or "the most liberal state governor", etc. Sometimes if the primaries are close down to the wire, two or more people are simultaneously "the most liberal", according to the attack ads.
You have no idea what Bush's true nature is. Only Bush himself knows that.
followed by
every time George got up from his seat, he would place his hand on our friend's shoulder, ask how she was doing or some other gesture showing concern. There were no cameras around or press to report his "kindness". He was not running for office or had any other reason to fake concern. He was genuine.
You contradict yourself, sir.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Those examples happened during wartime. We are not at war, we are fucking around with a third world country and getting bogged down in it. The last time we were at war was 1945.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"