NBC Sports Universal Chairman Dick Ebersol says viewers of the network's coverage of the XXIX Olympiad shouldn't expect a lot of superfluous reports on political protests and whatnot. NBC is planning 3,600 hours of television and Internet coverage of the Games, but Ebersol says NBC Sports will cut to news about unrest "only if it interferes with the competition or hinders athletes from getting to the competition." It's a policy that is not dissimilar from that of the Chinese state media, which spent all of yesterday pretending that the protests in Athens never happened.

As Anne Applebaum points out in today's Washington Post, we always expected this kind of "see no evil" behavior from the Olympics' corporate sponsors. But the media? There was always the danger that, with the Games being covered primarily by sports reporters ill-equipped to handle the complexities of modern day China, the political angle would be under-covered or simply ignored. Which is why this comment by Ebersol is concerning:

I believed in July of 2001 and believe today that the I.O.C. gave the Games to Beijing because it was really important for them to take place for the first time in the largest nation in the world. As it relates to the mysteries of China, including human rights, I believe giving the Games to China shines a light on a part of the world that wouldn't otherwise exist.”

China's human rights record is hardly a "mystery." Check out the U.S. State Department's country report on the subject, which lays out Beijing's dismal record in no uncertain terms.

All of this talk of shining a light on China reminds me of the way corporations -- automakers, banks, oil -- talked about doing business in apartheid South Africa back in the 1970s. Their pretense was the same one that NBC and the Beijing Games' corporate sponsors are employing today: that engagement encourages change from within. A quarter of a century later, in 2002, the victims of apartheid filed multi-billion dollar class-action lawsuits against IBM, Ford, Citigroup, British Petroleum, and other multinationals for collaborating in a crime against humanity. At least some firms, such as BP, defended their South African operations by arguing that they demonstrated to white South Africans that integration and profits can go hand-in-hand.

In the face of Beijing's quashing of political dissent, what will NBC and the other corporations that have gotten into bed with Beijing be able to say in defense of themselves? NBC paid nearly $900 million for the right to broadcast the Olypmics and China is already censoring its coverage. If that isn't enough to dispel any "mysteries" of authoritarianism, what is?

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This morning's Olympic torch-lighting ceremony in Greece was disrupted by protesters from the Paris-based media rights groups Reporters Without Borders. The bad publicity was exactly the kind of thing that Beijing was hoping (unrealistically) to avoid in the run-up to this summer's games, but also highlights a growing debate in France over whether the country should take action to voice its disapproval of China's human rights record.

RSF (the organization's French acronym) has proposed that France boycott the Games' opening ceremony. A poll published in today's Libération newspaper and sponsored by RSF found that 53 percent of respondents liked the idea of President Nicolas Sarkozy skipping the event. A separate poll in the sports magazine L'Equipe had nearly identical results. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he found the idea "interesting" last Tuesday but then quickly backtracked several hours later:

There are a lot of good ideas that can't be put into practice [...] When you're dealing in international relations with countries as important as China, obviously when you make economic decisions it's sometimes at the expense of human rights," he added. "That's elementary realism."

Sounds like somebody got a talking to. This isn't the first time that Kouchner's idealism has taken a back seat to his boss's more pragmatic priorities, and it raises some questions over whether the left-wing, former head of Doctors Without Borders is only in Sarkozy's government as liberal-internationalist window dressing. Sarkozy, for his part, has offered to make France a facilitator for negotiations between China and the Dalai Lama. It's a start, but as the protests inevitably grow throughout this spring, it's going to get harder to stick to the middle ground.

Update: Speaking on Tuesday, Sarkozy would not rule out the possibility of boycotting the ceremony, saying, "All options are open and I appeal to the Chinese leaders' sense of responsibility." Perhaps he's keeping an eye on the polls.

SAM TAYLOR/AFP/Getty Images

Climbers hoping to reach the top of the world are unlikely to have the opportunity in 2008, at least from the north side of the mountain in Tibet. China has banned climbers from attempting the mountain before May 10. Given the difficulties of weather, acclimatization, and logistics, the Chinese decision will make any attempt to summit the mountain this year "short of impossible," according to Everest veterans. The news comes as many climbing teams are already en route to the mountain to begin their expeditions.

A notice from the Tibet Mountaineering Association cites "concern of heavy climbing activities, crowded climbing routes, and increasing environmental pressures" for the decision. But the the more likely explanation for the ban is the Olympic torch, which China hopes to take to the top of the world's highest peak.

Reports say that climbers have also been banned until May 10 from attempting Cho Oyo, a nearby peak. Chinese officials reportedly tried to convince their Nepalese counterparts to also ban climbers from attempting the mountain from the southern side until May 10, although Nepal appears to have ignored those requests.

If this is a barometer of how it's gonna go down at the Beijing Oympics, China is in store for one heck of an embarrassing show.

(Hat tip: China Rises)

Asked about the highly anticipated opening ceremonies that he is planning for the Beijing Olympics, Chinese director Zhang Yimou had this to say:

All the actresses are good looking."

I'm glad we cleared that up.

FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently reached a shocking conclusion: Blogging is a "legitimate form of personal expression."

In the run-up to the Olympic Games, we've all heard about the Chinese government's restrictions on bloggers' freedom of expression, but not as many people seem to be aware of the blogging bans the IOC itself has imposed on Olympic athletes. In 2004, for the Athens games, athletes and coaches were not permitted to write firsthand accounts or maintain online diaries (a.k.a blogs). Posting personal videos and photos online was banned, too, unless permission was obtained first.

The IOC's brilliant rationale for gagging the athletes then: Protecting the interests of companies holding broadcasting rights comes first. (As if an athlete's blog is a direct competitor to an NBC sports commentator.)

This year, though, the IOC seems to have finally seen the light. Sort of. In Beijing, athletes can blog, as long as they follow some simple rules:

• No blogging about other competitors
• No videos, photos, or audio clips of sporting events and opening, closing, and medal ceremonies
• No ads or mention of sponsors (blogs can't be used for commercial gain)
• No domain names with words similar to "Olympics"
• No infringement of copyright agreements
• No information that could compromise security and staging of the events

My hunch is that as the Internet evolves and people become more tech savvy, some of these rules will prove tough to enforce. People will find ingenious ways to evade them; even at earlier Olympics, athletes are reported to have blogged "illegally." The IOC will learn sooner or later that trying to control people's online activities is a task of Olympic proportions.

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Chairman Yao goes down:

Houston center Yao Ming will miss the rest of the National Basketball Association season because of a stress fracture in his left foot, placing the Rockets' postseason chances and their 12-game winning streak in jeopardy.

It's too early to tell, but he could miss the Olympics as well.

In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC yesterday, President Bush reiterated that he's going to Beijing this summer for the handball and hurdles. Politics (read: human rights, Tibet, Darfur) won't be on his agenda:

I'm going to the Olympics. I view the Olympics as a sporting event.[...] There's a lot of issues that I suspect people are gonna, you know, opine, about during the Olympics. I mean, you got the Dali Lama crowd. You've got global warming folks. You've got, you know, Darfur and... I am not gonna you know, go and use the Olympics as an opportunity to express my opinions to the Chinese people in a public way 'cause I do it all the time with the president.

But using the Olympics as an opportunity to press the Chinese government and speak publicly to the Chinese people is exactly what Bush should be doing. Yang Jianli, a Chinese democracy activist who was imprisoned and tortured for five years on trumped-up charges, recently wrote in FP that keeping mum or flip-flopping on human rights when economic issues are raised only convinces the Chinese people that American friendship can be bought and sold. Chinese leaders want to make this year's Olympic Games the party of the century, Yang argues, and they are desperate to have world leaders and top-tier celebrities attend. That gives these attendees leverage:

So my proposal is conditional participation. The idea is that when the Chinese authorities extend the invitation to you to go there, you bring up human rights. Then press the Chinese authorities to do something to facilitate your participation. For example, when President Bush accepted [President] Hu Jintao’s invitation, he said, “I will go to Beijing as a sports fan. I will not make any political statements.”

He accepted the invitation too easily, but I don’t think it’s too late. There is still time for him to say something like, “I would love to go to China to participate at the Olympic Games, but I want to see the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” or “I won’t go unless a dozen political prisoners directly related to the [Tiananmen] massacre are released.”

[The party leaders] want President Bush to be there. They want all the renowned athletes to be there to the help them showcase their achievements. They need them to be there. So, why don’t we do something?

Steven Spielberg gets this, albeit a little late. And if Bush goes to Beijing only as a sports fan, he'll miss an enormous opportunity.