Trapeze artists spun above the heads of the sparse crowd inside Volkswagen's pavilion on the Olympic Green, earning the approval of Yao Yuhong. "It's great," the retired scientist marveled as performers bounced, twisted and turned above Perspex half tubes displaying VW cars against a water fountain backdrop. "It's big and bold", her friend Liu Xinping agreed. The pair of elderly academics toured the Olympic Green on Sunday using an Olympic Green coupon. "How does one get one?" I asked, but Yao didn't know. She was given hers by her son.

      It seems knowing someone who knows someone may be the best -- or even the only -- way to find one of these coupons. On Sunday, I asked Sun Weide, official spokesman for the Beijing Games organizers, or Bocog, the same question - how to get one - but even he wasn't too sure of the details. This is strange as Bocog has been telling journalists for a full week now that it's doing its best to increase visitor numbers to the Green.

If the United States softball team was as smart as it is talented, it might have lost to China this afternoon in what was the final game—and a meaningless one—in the preliminary competition. The U.S. team's record was 6-0 and it had clinched the top seed in the medal round, while China was already destined for elimination.

That also happens to be the fate of the sport in the Olympics, tossed out of the games starting with London 2012*. The International Softball Federation (ISF) has launched a campaign—"Back Softball"—to seek reinstatement for 2020 at an International Olympic Committee vote in October, 2009. Several factors appear to have led to softball getting shut out of the the Games, but the one most frequently cited is the American ladies' total domination of the sport. They have won all three previous Olympic golds and are now riding a 21-game unbeaten streak in Olympic competition.

But our softball ladies are athletes, not diplomats. So they put up nine runs in the first inning and the game was stopped after five because of what we always knew as the "mercy" rule. And they bristle at the notion that, unlike Michael Phelps or the Chinese table tennis players or, once upon a time, the "Dream Team," they should be punished for their excellence. "The frustrating thing is we feel we're putting on a great show and all anybody wants to talk about is what happens when we're done," said Cat Osterman, the starting pitcher against China.

Just eight years ago in Sydney, the American softball team lost three games and barely squeaked by Japan for the gold medal. But unlike basketball, where the gulf between the United States and the world has clearly been narrowing since that Dream Team romp at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, softball has seen the American team become increasingly more dominant. The sport simply doesn't have the money of basketball, with those NBA riches, to spread its gospel and game around the world. Monica Abbott, whose perfect game against the Netherlands was the U.S.'s first-ever at the Olympics, says the other countries can't be expected to catch up overnight with what is, after all, "the American pastime", or at least the distaff version. Still, she can't understand why their excellence is held against them. "[Excellence] is what Olympics are all about," she said.

But the excellence doesn't assure a competition that is compelling or even good entertainment (and some suggest it borders on the unseemly). Theirs has been a scorched-earth performance. In seven contests to date, the team has allowed only one unearned run and, incredibly, just five hits—U.S. pitchers have thrown one perfect game and two no-hitters—while breaking the Olympic mark for home runs by a team. China managed one hit, a leadoff single today, but that actually raised the batting average of the opposition against the trio of American aces to .042. And not to be unkind to our very gracious hosts, but China—one Gold Glove caliber diving catch by the center fielder not withstanding—gave a performance in the field that could have passed for a tribute to the foibles of the '62 Mets.

American dominance isn't the only problem softball faces in convincing the IOC to reverse its decision. Though there are 131 national federations—Kosovo is the latest—for softball, the IOC appears concerned that the game hasn't reached more places and attained higher levels in those places it has already reached. And then there is the the problem of baseball, which is also having its Olympic swan song in Beijing. The IOC was exceedingly anxious to dispatch baseball—MLB refuses to send its best players, has balked at Olympic drug-testing standards and had the effrontery to establish its own World Baseball Classic—and also tossed out what many of its voters view as women's baseball. The baby with the bath water, so to speak.

At the IOC meeting next fall in Copenhagen (where the 2016 Games will be awarded to Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo or Rio de Janiero), the assemblage will consider the applications of both softball and baseball, along with five new Olympic contenders--rugby, karate, golf, squash and roller sports. At most, two will be added and while softball will spend a few million dollars on its reinstatement campaign before then, some of the other sports have a lot more financial backing. (Tiger at the Olympics anyone?)

Softball's future as an Olympic sport is very much tied to its future as a sport. The ISF reaped almost $7 million from the Athens Games four years ago, which is critical to its international mission. Moreover, it's far easier to attract sponsors when you can make your pitch on stationery bearing the five rings. "You have credibility when you're an Olympic sports," says ISF president Don Porter.

The players say they are entirely focused on Beijing, no matter how much everybody else tries to get them to focus on the future. "We're playing for the gold now," says Osterman. But the three pitching aces, the third of whom is the famously photogenic Jennie Finch, are well aware that Olympic glory may soon be a remnant of the past rather than a goal for the future. "I get five or six e-mails a day asking," Why is my daughter's Olympic dream vanishing," says Porter, at 78 a veteran of the sport's battle to get in the Games in the first place. "We're fighting for all the young girls around the world who want that Olympic dream."

*NOTE: As several commenters have pointed out, the London games are in 2012, not, as this post originally said, 2016.

As soon as hurdler Liu Xiang, obviously in pain, yanked off his competition tag and walked out of the Bird’s Nest—dashing the hopes of a nation of 1.3 billion—Chinese friends began text-messaging me. “China’s just like Liu Xiang: Can’t run anymore”, commented one. When I asked why he thought that, my friend SMS’ed back, “Badly hurt from the past and too much pressure on him…not enjoying the pure fun of sports anymore. But it’s good 2 stop 4 awhile to take it slow and do it rite.”
 
In the end, his injuries—and perhaps the intense burden of China's gold-medal aspirations—got the better of Liu. He grimaced with discomfort even as he settled into the starting block of his 110m hurdles heat Monday. He stopped after a false start, stumbled forward for a few steps, clutched his leg, and then walked out of the stadium to a stunned silence from the expectant audience.  China’s Great Hope had pulled out of the competition that had represented China’s best hope of an athletics gold medal. Not just his many fans but also Chinese security guards, journalists, and even his coach Sun Haiping broke down and wept with disappointment at Liu’s withdrawal.
 
Liu's stunning pull-out saddened many Chinese. The hopes of the entire nation had been riding on Liu, who came out of relative obscurity to win the gold medal at Athens in the 110 meter hurdles—probably the most unexpected of the 32 golds that China snagged at the 2004 Games. Never before had a Chinese man struck gold in a track and field event, and he quickly became the nation’s most famous athlete, more deified even than hoops celebrity Yao Ming.

It’s hard to overestimate how badly his compatriots wanted to see Liu repeat his golden performance on home turf. In a survey of more than 1000 Chinese respondents at the end of 2007, the majority said witnessing Liu win gold in the Bird’s Nest this August was their number one Olympic dream. Chinese columnist Ramond Zhou, who contributes to the official English-language China Daily, explained it to me this way shortly before the Games kicked off: “I only care about Liu Xiang.  His winning the gold would be like Obama winning the U.S. presidency. It’s about shattering the stereotype that Asians can’t win track and field sports. People say that because Chinese don't eat so much beef that they don't have stamina—so therefore must rely on skill." Liu was supposed to put that stereotype to rest.

But at least for now that dream has died, leaving a lot of soul-searching in its place. People are beginning to question whether it was unhealthy to burden Liu, 25, with such heavy medal hopes -- and whether it was a sign of misguided old-school priorities to make him the symbol of an entire nation's new-found international clout and success. Even before his dramatic withdrawal today, Liu has had a troubled year. On May 31 he withdrew from the Reebok Grand Prix due to a tight hamstring. A few days later—on June 8, in fact, though the numeral “8” wasn’t so lucky for Liu in that instance—he was disqualified from the Prefontaine Classic Grand Prix due to a false start.

Then at the IAAF Grand Prix in Europe, 21-year-old Cuban hurdler Dayron Robles shaved one-hundredth of a second off the 12.88 second world  record set by Liu in July 2006. Many analysts—including my colleague Quindlen Krovatin in this July 1 post in our "Countdown to Beijing" blog—began speculating whether Liu could overcome such setbacks—not to mention the intense psychological pressures which made the possibility of losing face in front of a home crowd so much more unbearable than the fear of losing a contest overseas.

Though most of his fans were devastated, some Chinese seemed to think perhaps Liu had become too famous and too spoiled too fast. Local media reported that lighting in the Bird's Nest National Stadium was readjusted to shine less brightly after Liu’s coach complained that the lights were too intense for his famous star.  We'll bring you more on Chinese reaction; not everyone had been obsessed with Liu's winning gold. “In any case, Liu wouldn’t have won had he competed,” Beijing graphic artist Lu Bin told my colleague Jonathan Ansfield today.  Lu took Liu’s pull-out in stride: “Of [all] the big sports stars, Liu Xiang’s the one who annoys me most. I bet now he’ll slowly switch over to the entertainment world.” After all, Liu's face has been plastered over gigantic billboards advertising Visa and other big name brands, and Liu was widely regarded to be the poster-boy of the 2008 Olympics.  One way or another, it looks like Liu will be remembered for a long time to come.

Any public endeavor on the scale of the Olympics has its bloopers. Entries into the Beijing Games' hit list of "oops" began mounting up even before the last sparkler from Friday's opening ceremonies died out. For one thing, some of the extravaganza's pyrotechnic wizardry turned out to be computer-generated special effects. Nearly all but the last of those gigantic fireworks “footprints” in the sky, which were shown on TV—awing four billion viewers worldwide as they "walked" from Tiananmen Square to the Bird's Nest—were in fact filmed last year and spliced digitally into the televised version.

And that really cute little girl singing the iconic song "Ode to the Motherland", the pixieish 9-year-old Lin Miaoke, was actually lip-synching to the voice of that not-quite-so-cute 7-year-old Yang Peiyi. Apparently a Politburo member decided Lin's voice wouldn't cut it while Yang's orthodontically challenged appearance was not ready for prime time. (I kept telling people this would be a made-for-TV "virtual Olympics".)

If you're a geek you'll recognize the fatal Blue Screen of Death, symbol of bugs and glitches in the Microsoft operating system

As if that's not tacky enough, now we hear about the cameo appearance made that evening by the all-too-familiar Blue Screen of Death. The BSOD message usually opens with the sentence: "A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer." Geeks consider it an icon of the many bugs and glitches in the Windows operating system.

Oh yes, the Chinese computer wizards who helped bring us the greatest show on earth Friday, and indeed the Olympics themselves, also confessed that all the computers used by Beijing Games organizers were programmed cautiously with Windows XP instead of Microsoft's newer Vista—because the latter has a penchant for becoming "not stable.” Bill Gates, who was in the audience at the opening ceremony, was apparently unaware that his presence was being eclipsed by these other stars of the Microsoft universe. Credit for zooming in on the Blue Screen of Death goes to the Website Gizmodo, where someone left a comment saying, “that's awesome, only a nerd would notice this.”

I should also mention that what looks like a rather smartly dressed human fly jogging 70 meters in mid-air, studiously ignoring the nearby Blue Screen of Death, is gymnast-turned-sportswear-mogul Li Ning, who is now space-walking all the way to the bank. As Fergus Naughton blogged about earlier, Li saw stock prices in his Hong Kong-listed Li Ning Co. Ltd..surge after he lit the Olympic torch at the highlight of Friday’s blowout. Li won six medals at the ’84 LA Games; he went on to head a sports apparel and accessories empire which, with 10.5 percent share of China's sportswear market, is now racing to catch up with Olympic sponsor Adidas's 15.6 percent and Nike's 16.7 percent share. Friday's one giant (CGI) leap for mankind made stocks controlled by Li USD 30 million more valuable by Monday—not bad for a single act of passive ambush marketing.

Apropos of Li Ning's $30-million-dollar space walk, his firm is providing athletic wear for the Olympic teams of China, Spain and Sweden. Which brings us to another of the Games’ bloopers. Everyone’s tut-tutting over the fact that the Spanish Olympic basketball team posed for a promotional ad that shows them—yup, all 15 of them—using their fingers to pull their eyes into slant-eyed squints. The image has been running in Spanish papers since Friday, part of a publicity campaign for team sponsor Seur, a courier firm in Spain. A Seur representative in Madrid said the firm meant no offense but had no immediate plans to pull the ad, which was slated to run until the end of the Games.

On his blog, point guard Jose Manuel Calderon—who also plays for NBA’s Toronto Raptors—said the team was responding to a request from the photographer and made what they thought “would be interpreted as an affectionate gesture." He added, "Some of my best friends in Toronto are originally Chinese, including one of our sponsors, the brand Li Ning." Frank Zhang, Li Ning's director of government and public affairs, played down the incident. "We don't think this is an insulting gesture to the Chinese…the gesture shows that the Spanish team is so humorous, relaxing and cute. They sat around a dragon pattern, which we think showed respect to the Chinese.”

Not everyone agrees. The Spanish team was consistently booed during its Tuesday game against China; world champion Spain won 85-75. The Chinese jeering was perhaps the most conspicuous public display of negative partisanship during the Games so far. Local residents have been instructed to be good sports by Chinese authorities, who have carefully vetted “approved” cheers that the audience may use. Booing isn't one of them.

The Chinese people have waited years for the Olympics. So did the lavish Beijing 2008 Opening Ceremony deliver? Five cultural commentators gave me their views: most gave a thumbs up to director Zhang Yimou’s portrayal of China’s ancient culture. However, they were less keen on the scenes of China’s modernized present and promising future which they found tacky or sentimental.

Basically, the opening ceremony was in three parts: a gorgeous series of tableaux covering China’s history and culture; an endless parade of athletes; and the stodgy ceremonials surrounding the Olympic flag and flame.

Part One was a magnificent light show that used hundreds of twirling dancers, switching from red and gold scenes to quieter blue and white ones, from wild drumming to delicate taichi. It acted as condensed guide to China’s history, Confucian culture and famous inventions – paper, printing, fireworks, and the first compasses for navigation. Luckily, I got walked through all of this by an expert, Prof Chen Xia from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

“It’s very beautiful, oh yes, very beautiful,” she murmured. Early scenes showed performers painting on paper by twisting their bodies like dancers. A scroll of lights unrolled itself across in the middle of the stadium, scripting the story like an old Chinese book as the picture on it changed from desert Silk Road to maritime exploits exporting tea and porcelain.

This bit was easy enough for a foreigner to grasp, but the invention of wood block printing, coupled with readings from the philosopher Confucius were tougher going. Prof Chen was so inspired, particularly by the fireworks, that at one point she set out from her home towards the Bird’s Nest for a closer view. Disappointment followed, as the taxi driver told her the roads were blocked off.

I was grateful though that she explained some of the more opaque sequences, such as the link between the scenes of musicians and Confucian beliefs that joyful self-restraint is internalized by playing music. Perfect for encouraging the harmonious society China’s leaders want to see.

Prof Chen’s verdict was mixed though. The history was beautifully done she thought, but “a little hard for foreigners to understand, and even some Beijing people”. More modern-day sequences showing the Bird's Nest, trains, tower blocks and school kids were cloying, with “too many things from the children”, she said.

Victor Yuan, founder of opinion polling company Horizon gave the show 65%, praised the fireworks and loved the writhing dancers who painted with their feet. Overall, though he was “really disappointed” that the show’s magic was limited to the past with “not so much imagination about the future” and critical of Zhang for failing to consult more radical artists. Journalist Yu Ping, who writes about culture and fashion, also dismissed tableaux of modern China showing children and space ships as “too simple”.

So far, three of my commentators had approved the show’s portrayal of China’s ancient culture, but I expected TV anchor Rui Chenggang to be a hard guy to please. He shot to fame after objecting to the presence of Starbucks in the Forbidden City as trampling on Chinese tradition. Did Zhang Yimou’s popularization win his approval? Overall, yes. “It’s appropriate, it’s imaginative”, he said.

While my commentators were mostly watching on TV, philanthropist Hiu Ng was in the Bird’s Nest, and bombarding me with excited text messages. “The atmosphere is unbelievably vibrant”, she yelled when I called her. Ng, co-founder of civic action groups 51SIM.org and 51give, saw the lavish portrayal of the past as packaging a message about the present. China “went through a phase when we were unhappy with our culture” and is now “at peace” with history. As a result, it’s poised to promote its traditional approach of harmony to the wider world, she says. As for the performance, “this is a show that everyone from all over the world can love”.

Ping was waiting to see the Chinese team stride out to test that theory. Chinese Netizens had failed to love their team’s yellow and red outfits, savaging them as a “tomato [and] scrambled egg” look. She’d interviewed the design company Hengyuan Xiang who’d protested that the clothes' vivid colors were meant to enhance the group in a big arena not flatter individuals. To her relief, she found that “if they are walking together they look very wonderful”. Here at least, harmony ruled. But based on my unscientific straw poll few Chinese will have found an enduring image of the future in tonight's events.

The ID of the final torchbearer is supposed to be a well-guarded secret. So it might look odd that in China of all places the official news wire seems to be tipping its hand just hours ahead of time:

"Chinese legendary gymnast to light Olympic flame?

    "BEIJING, Aug. 8 (Xinhua) -- The hot tip on who will light the Olympic flame at the Olympic Games opening ceremony tonight is gymnastics legend Li Ning.

    "As sports stars Liu Xiang and Yao Ming appeared out of the possible candidate list, Li has been considered a prime choice to light the cauldron at the National Stadium, or the Bird's Nest.

    "Lighting the cauldron with the flame from Olympia is an immense honour and the most symbolic act of the ceremony.

    "The final torch bearer should be able to represent the image of China, communicate with the world, display the Olympic spirit, and be fully recognized by the public, Feng Jianzhong, deputy head of the General Administration of Sport, has said.

    "Li, 45, won three gold medals, two silver and one bronze in gymnastics at the 1984 Olympics. Known as China's gymnastics prince, he has been garlanded with success. And nowadays, he is a successful businessman with his own sports goods company."

Xinhua came out with the above item over its English wire at a little after three o’clock p.m. Beijing time today. There did not appear to be a corresponding report in Chinese.>

We shall see whether Xinhua spoke too soon or not. But clearly this matter is being treated as a sports secret, rather than a political one. Xinhua, among many others, has been speculating a lot in recent days. Already, the roster of torchbearers posted on web site of the State General Administration of Sport had hinted that Li would be among the last at the Bird's Nest tonight.

Li served his country proudly, then went on to build a lucrative brand out of it. Who better to represent the 'New Beijing'?

President Bush has flown into Beijing to attend the Olympics opening ceremony Friday night. However, his first duty call was to open the new US embassy at 8.08 AM on Aug 8, mirroring the Games ceremonial start time of 8.08 PM on the same day. The gesture was "a nice tip of the hat" to China, says one US businessman invited to the dedication ceremony.

How far to tip the hat to China has been a tricky issue for the outgoing US president in recent days. He has garnered headlines by sprinkling his farewell mini-tour of East Asia with critical remarks about China’s human rights record. Yet he has made clear for months he won’t be repeating those comments publicly once he arrives on Chinese soil. Face-to-face chats with China’s leaders are more productive, he says. The new embassy’s muted colour scheme aims for a similar concept: "It’s...sophisticated and serious in keeping with the level of diplomacy”, State Department architect Jay Holleran who oversaw the project with designers Skidmore, Owings and Merrill told journalists during an open house tour on Tuesday.

As the embassy opening got underway, Reporters Without Borders tipped its hat in the other direction with an illegal radio broadcast in support of free speech. The 20-minute show went out in Beijing at 8.08 AM on the 104.4 FM frequency and contained interviews with an exiled journalist and other dissidents to highlight the “dozens and dozens of journalists and internet users in prison” in China, said RWB general secretary Robert Ménard who anchored it. The show used mini transmitters and antennae and is posted on RWB’s website. (The White House press corps accompanying the president had their own run-in with China's control-meisters; authorities kept them waiting for hours on the tarmac, until around dawn, to sort through red tape and "procedures" for disembarking).

The political juggling at the heart of diplomacy is embodied in the design elsewhere in the embassy compound. The central tower appears to be a glass-fronted office block. Not lack of imagination, but a deliberate "architectural statement about clarity", Bill Prior of the State Department's overseas buildings bureau told me Tuesday. But take a second look, because the real wall of the main building sits a few feet behind the glass curtain. It’s actually a concrete fortress pierced by small, oblong windows, like a gun turret. Transparency can be a tricky thing for diplomats and their governments.

And so it is with the White House dance over human rights in the last few days. Bush hosted five exiled dissidents (but no Tibetans) at the White House last week, and in Bangkok spoke of America’s  “firm opposition” to China's suppression of human rights and religious freedom. This drew an equally ritualistic response from China’s Foreign Ministry; it condemned “any words or acts that interfere in other countries' internal affairs”. Hard to tell where the windows and walls are here too.

Both President Bush and his father will attend this evening’s Olympic Games opening ceremony in the Bird’s Nest stadium. In 1989, Bush Senior faced calls for boycotts and sanctions against China far more intense than anything his son has skated around in the months since the Lhasa riots. The elder Bush mostly ignored them, amid criticisms of toadying to commercial interests that every US president has faced since. But China prospered, opening the way to WTO entry accords (finally clinched by President Bill Clinton) that transformed the relationship into mutual economic dependency. Bush senior’s 1989 stance makes him arguably the most influential American president in shaping modern US-China ties. I'm pondering these uncomfortable truths: without his indifference to the human rights lobby China today might much poorer.

Next year marks 30 years of US-China diplomatic relations since Washington switched its embassy from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. Bush is leaving office with the US’ reputation weaker than at any time since WWII, its soft power sapped by its adventures in Iraq, its economy in distress back home. His legacy for US-China relations may prove as lasting as his father’s, but in a wholly different direction. China’s rise may be over-hyped but it’s real and there’s more space for it than previously as the US depends on the partnership much too heavily to offend.

Finally, it’s a shame that embassies are seldom open to the public because this is a fine building. It’s a fortress, of course. There’s a moat in front of the visa office, the gravel paths all double up as fire truck access roads, and the coyly-named dragon wall is a windowless band of black stone two stories high along the base of the building. But it’s also home to a stunning collection of modern Chinese and American art – and red lobby chairs in different heights and sizes that’ll make the place a paradise for behavioral psychologists.

 
Aritz Parra/AP

The first skirmishes in the guerrilla war between Chinese authorities and human rights protesters took place on Wednesday. Plenty of what China doesn't want to happen has happened here today, but so far it's been small-scale, with a scrappy, subterranean feel, and very little of it has occurred in public. By the end of the afternoon, four Free Tibet protesters had been detained and a film show was canceled. Human rights groups staged at least four protests.

The day's most successful stunt came from Students for a Free Tibet. Two men--American Phil Bartell and Briton Iain Thom--climbed pylons near the showcase Bird's Nest National Stadium at dawn and hung out banners saying "Tibet will be Free" and "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet". Police detained the climbers and their two helpers–one man and one woman–who were acting as spotters at the base of the pylon, and there has been no word of them since. It's likely they've been deported. Despite the small scale of this incident, the stadium is the icon of the Games and will be the site of the opening ceremony on Friday. It's blow to the police for activists to get so close so such a sensitive site.

Free Tibet activists also organized film showings in hotel rooms, notifying reporters by text message. The first show went ahead, attended by Reuters and BBC reporters, but Newsweek's invitation was to the later event in a second hotel. There was a distinctly amateur feel to this occasion as two dozen reporters milled round the lobby of the modest Hotel G (no secrecy here, that's its full name) in east Beijing, trying to gain entry to Room 612. While management insisted that 612's occupant did not want us admitted, reporters dialed the room and were told to come up. After a while, though, Room 612 stopped answering. Seven journalists who did make it inside appeared and said that management had switched off the TV and ordered them out. The UK-based organizers included Dechen Pemba, a Tibetan woman with a British passport who was deported from Beijing in July. Before the film, Pemba gave a 10 minute introduction by video, Reuters reported.

Hotel rooms were a creative theme of the day. If the film show was art-house, the day's third event was more like an art school degree show installation. Selected reporters were invited to go to two hotel rooms a couple of miles apart, locate the room key taped to the back of the "Do not disturb" sign and let themselves inside for a private viewing. What they found, according to a photographer with the Spanish paper El Mundo, were walls daubed with slogans and a life-size black-clad figure laid out on the bed with a splash of red paint at its neck. Daubed directly onto the walls was the slogan "Speak out for those who have no voices", the Beijing 2008 logo and the names of five jailed dissidents. The names in both rooms were the same: AIDS activist Hu Jia, Pastor Zhang Rongliang who supports unregistered churches or "house churches", journalist Shi Tao, human rights activist and lawyer Guo Feixiong, and Falungong member Xu Na. There was no sign of the organizers (who presumably paid cash for their rooms) according to Richard Spencer of the UK-based newspaper The Daily Telegraph. It's not clear who organized these spectacles.

These guerrilla actions are small scale affairs, but the Games haven't started yet. There almost certainly will be more protests in the days ahead.

The Hotel G was shut down after this incident, according to an email from the film show's organizers. "According to many sources the guests of Hotel G. were forced to leave their hotel and find other places for the coming night," it said.

This morning’s attack, which killed 16 police in the far western region of Xinjiang, did not exactly surprise me, but it may have startled at least one senior official from the area, Kerexi Maihesuti. Just last Friday in a Beijing press conference for foreign media the vice chairman of the Xinjiang region described the threat of ethnic Uighur separatists there as a disorderly band of wanna-be’s “with limited power” who are “not competent make the attacks which some hostile forces wish".

      Are authorities dangerously downplaying the threat? Well, not always. A People’s Daily editorial last month warned grimly that “The Beijing Olympics is facing a terrorist threat unsurpassed