Beijing Olympics Ticket Sales Crash Ticket System 

Sales of Beijing Olympics tickets in China came to a screeching halt yesterday when an extremely high volume of online visitors, combined with telephone and in-person requests, crashed the ticket system. Only 9,000 of almost 2 million tickets were sold. This would be just an interesting news story if it didn't raise some disturbing questions. The Beijing Olympic Committee said the system crashed because they dramatically underestimated the volume of online visitors. So, what else is the Beijing Olympic Committee dramatically underestimating? Do they have the ability to handle the volume that is coming, in less than a year, to the stadiums, hotels, restaurants, etc.?

When Do The 2008 Summer Olympics Start?

For those of you who might not know this, the 2008 Summer Olympics are being played in Beijing, China from August 8th-24th.That means as of today there are only 279 days left until the 2008 Olympics start! We won't be counting down every day until it's much closer... I just thought you might want to know when the Summer Olympics started.

How Free Will the Free Press be at the Beijing Olympics, and Does it Matter?

Beijing officials are doing their best to assure foreign journalists that the foreign press at the Beijing Olympics will be free to report whatever they choose. However, members of the press have concerns about whether it is actually even possible to report honestly from China. I think the world will get as accurate a picture of China, as possible, but I don't know how much digging will actually go on during the Olympics. Will journalists plan to visit prisons and have access to political prisoners held there? Will they have the time or the inclination to really see what goes on in China factories? And do we care?

Many governments have said they would not boycott the Olympics, pretty much no matter what was proved to be true. Recently, the Australian government said that even if it were proved that China was harvesting organs from prisoners, they wouldn't boycott the Olympics. Of course, the Vice-President of the European Parliament did threaten a boycott if China didn't reign in the government in Myanmar (Burma), but I wonder if that would ever be carried out? So, the question is what will the world do if the world's press DOES find atrocities? Will the world even blink?