The BBC quotes Black Eyed Peas star Will.i.am as rejecting a boycott of the Beijing Olympics because it isn't right to "punish a whole country." Fair enough. The Black Eyed Peas are planning to gig in China in June.

But then, Will.i.am, who says the events in Tibet are "messed up," suggests a far more radical tack:

If America really wants to make a difference, it should stop importing China's products and pay back its debt."

What we have here, folks, is the fallacy of the excluded middle. There's actually a lot the United States can do in this here. For some more coherent thoughts on how to pressure Beijing on human rights, check out the new Web exclusive by William F. Schulz, the former head of Amnesty International USA.

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Workers install a wind-energy lamp on the spectator dam at the Olympic Sailing Center, the venue for the sailing events during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, during a media tour on April 24, 2008 in Qingdao of Shandong Province, China. Qingdao is one of co-host cities of the 2008 Olympics, where the sailing events will take place between August 9, 2008 and August 23, 2008.

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It was to be the marquee event of the Olympic torch's tour around the world. In a triumphant show of Chinese prowess and technological know-how, the torch was to ascend to the highest point on Earth and powerfully symbolize China's dramatic entry on the world stage.

Instead, as Agence France Presse puts it, the torch's trip up Mt. Everest, which could begin as early as this weekend, has "descended into farce":

[L]ast-minute changes this week by Beijing Olympic officials called for a rapid and tightly controlled two-to-three day trip through riot-hit Tibet to Mount Everest base camp. The changes raised concerns among journalists about the health impact of ascending too quickly to the camp's elevation of 5,150 metres (16,900 feet). After foreign media requested further information on the safety concerns, Beijing Olympic Games organisers set a sudden Thursday morning payment deadline for air tickets to the Tibetan capital Lhasa. The situation descended into farce when the Olympic official tasked with collecting payments refused to accept the fees from organisations including AFP and other international news agencies as he headed to the airport to purchase the tickets. 'I'm sorry, it is too late. I am going to the airport now,' said Xu Xianhui, a Beijing Games media official. It was not immediately clear if the refusal to accept payment was part of an official government decision to keep reporters out of Tibet. Xu said the payment of some foreign media organisations had been accepted but declined specifics. Olympic organisers were asked to explain the refusal but did not immediately reply."

Officials in Beijing also announced that foreign press would not be allowed to cover the climbing team's departure from Everest Base Camp, scheduled for tomorrow.

Moreover, medical experts say the trip from Beijing (at sea level) to Base Camp should not be made in less than one week in order to allow for acclimatization. Accordingly, several news agencies pulled their reporters from the assignment due to the potential for serious health complications. Authoritarianism through bureaucracy is an art form in China.

The move is hardly surprising, considering that the reporters hoping to cover the torch's climb up Everest were to be the first allowed to enter Tibet in a month or so. Scattered reports of continued protests are still leaking out of Lhasa, despite a near-complete ban on media coverage. And Beijing is clearly paranoid that the torch's trip there will spark more uprisings. Earlier this week, an American mountaineer was kicked off Everest by officials keeping watch over the mountain after a "Free Tibet" banner was discovered in his gear. Oh, and Tibet won't be reopened to tourists next month as planned, either.

Does anyone else see a pattern developing here? At this point, it seems appropriate to ask whether the Beijing Games can even be taken seriously. So, can they?

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You have probably already heard about protests in China over the weekend in several cities against French supermarket chain Carrefour and alleged Western media bias. But there were also demonstrations by the Chinese community on Saturday in five Western cities: Berlin, Vienna, Paris, London and Washington. Xinhua news agency reports thousands of participants in the European cities and hundreds here in Washington. With signs like "Love our China" and "You can't find this from BBC... Stop disrupting the Olympics" there is a clear, organized international effort to get the message out that many overseas Chinese also oppose the affronts to the Olympic games and the related media coverage. The silent protest in Britain attracted 3,000 participants and was the first public demonstration on the part of the Chinese community there.

Recent fervor has demonstrated a strong, unified voice on the part of the Chinese community. And said overtures are producing results: French President Nikolas Sarkozy sent a letter to "Wheelchair Angel" Jin Jing expressing sympathy and regret for her treatment in the Paris torch relay (but no apology).

But the strife continues as yesterday, the Paris city council went over Sarkozy's head and approved the Dalai Lama for honorary citizenship, in addition to recently jailed dissident Hu Jia. While many may call it misguided for its lack of respect for human rights, the Chinese position shows sophistication in political advocacy: Adopt a unified stance and get the widest possible coverage to spread your message. Though the synergy is the result of the people and the government touting the same line, it's an impressive campaign for a country with a state-run media. It's also worth pointing out that, unlike people within China itself, these expats have access to the gamut of information on their homeland, and yet they still feel strongly that the Western view is biased.

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I remember when the first McDonald's opened in Moscow in 1990. There was something powerfully symbolic about seeing tens of thousands of Russians lined up to get a taste of America. It meant communism was on the way out. Capitalism had won. And Muscovites were waiting hours in the cold to get a "Big Mak" just to prove it. The store needed 27 cash registers and seating for 700 just to accommodate the crowds. Young Russians left jobs at coveted scientific institutions in order for the chance to earn 1.5 rubles an hour making fries for Ronald McDonald. Take that, Mr. Gorbachev.

Put bluntly, the whole thing felt like a victory. Eighteen years later, the conduct of U.S. companies with regard to the Beijing Olympics offers a different feeling indeed. Here's the slogan Coca-Cola (a company which is in bed with the Beijing Olympics to the tune of between $75 and $90 million) is using in its Chinese marketing: "Red Around the World." Yeah, you read that right. The slogan comes in the form of a jingle that makes up the centerpiece of Coke's Olympics-specific marketing efforts in country.

Now, call me McCarthyite if you want, but this rubs me the wrong way. We're talking about a country that, just a few years ago, was aggressively forcing down U.S. military aircraft and currently maintains one of the most robust -- if not the most robust -- spying platforms against the West. Now Coke, an American icon if ever there was one, is publicly envisioning the spread of "red around the world?"

Andres Kieger, Coke's director of marketing in China, says the color red isn't all that bad. "This isn't meant as a patriotic song," he says. "It is meant as an emotional song. Red is the color of a lot of good things." Presumably he was referring to Coke cans and not the nationalistic symbols of, say, Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany. Had someone at Coke bothered to check, say, Wikipedia, they would have found multiple entries explaining that, politically at least, red is the color of communism. The phenomenon dates to the Russian Revolution, when red symbolized the bloodshed of the working class in the fight against capitalism. For the more artistically inclined, the folks at the Guggenheim explain here.

I'm all for the forces of capitalism and target-specific marketing. But somehow, kowtowing to Beijing by trumpeting the spread of Communist red just doesn't feel like a victory to me.

Grass-roots sentiment against the French is getting so heated in China that the government is now trying to cool things down. 

Last time Chinese nationalism got out of control, the government called for calm in the name of "social harmony."

This time, the rationale is economic development (the big dog on the national agenda and one of the best ways for citizens to serve the nation). Reminding the people of China's struggles is a great antidote to anger directed at foreign corporations, or so a commentary run by state news agency Xinhua appears to hope:

Thirty years of reform and opening up have created a China miracle... But we must be crystal clear that for China that has endured so much, the future road will not be all smooth-going."

The commentary also calls the anger "unadorned" and a "sincere demonstration of public opinion."

The government clearly has a lot of reigning in to do: A survey conducted in 10 Chinese cities found that two thirds of respondents support a boycott against French supermarket chain Carrefour.

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Tyler Cowen cites this story as evidence that "we shouldn't boycott the Olympics in any way":

A wheelchair-bound Chinese torch bearer has rocketed to national fame after fending off protesters in Paris, becoming a symbol of China's defiance of global demonstrations backing Tibet.

Jin Jing, a 27 year-old amputee and Paralympic fencer has been called the "angel in a wheelchair" and is being celebrated by television chat shows, newspapers and online musical videos after fiercely defending the Olympic torch during the Paris leg of the troubled international relay.

Protesters denouncing Chinese policy in Tibet threw themselves at Jin. Most were wrestled away by police but at least one reached her wheelchair and tried to wrench the torch away. Jin clung tenaciously to what has become a controversial icon of the Beijing Olympic Games until her attacker was pulled off. Her look of fierce determination as she shielded the torch, captured in snapshots of the scene, has now spread throughout China, inflaming simmering public anger at the protests. "I thought we had lost in France, but seeing the young disabled torch bearer Jin Jing's radiant smile of conviction, I know in France we did not lose, we won!" said one of tens of thousands of Internet postings about the incident.

Here's Jin receiving a hero's welcome at a Lenovo event in Beijing:

China Photos/Getty Images

Jin, who received scratches on her chin and shoulders during the Paris incident, cuts a pretty damn sympathetic figure. No wonder Chinese netizens are so angry with the French.

Once again, Hillary's campaign is running up against what may be its most formidable adversary: Bill Clinton.

First, he flubbed big time last week by reviving -- and inaccurately describing -- the Bosnia sniper controversy. And now, just when Hillary wants to be seen as tough on China, comes an LAT piece yesterday that Bill's foundation has taken an undisclosed sum from a Chinese company accused of helping the government censor the Internet and crack down on Tibetan activists.

Alibaba, which owns Yahoo! China, asked Bill to speak at a 2005 executives' conference in China. In lieu of his usual speaking fee, often as high as $400,000, Bill asked for an undisclosed donation to his foundation. Last month, Yahoo! China's homepage ran "Wanted" posters of Tibetan activists the government accused of spreading unrest. Rebecca MacKinnon wrote recently of experiments she ran on Chinese search engines: Yahoo! China's was censored the most.

On the campaign trail, Hillary has gotten out in front of her opponents on the Olympics issue by calling on Bush to boycott the opening ceremony, "absent major changes by the Chinese government." But it certainly doesn't play well for her position when her husband's foundation receives large checks from a company so closely aligned with Beijing.

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This year's nationalism soup in China smacks of that served in 2005 but with some more eclectic ingredients. Then, it was anti-Japanese sentiment over WWII-era war crimes that stirred up popular unrest. The Chinese government stoked the public's anger, leading to diplomatic facilities getting smashed up and calls for a boycott of Japanese goods. Sensing that things had gotten out of control, the government eventually drew the line.

Now, it is global activism tied to the Beijing Olympics that is fueling national anger. Many Chinese feel that other countries are exploiting the games for political reasons. Howard French of the International Herald Tribune explains the anger is so deep because their government "sold them on the Olympics as a measure of their standing and stature in the world," and they feel the world isn't giving China its due.

The latest country to face Chinese wrath is France, which Chinese netizens singled out as the worst embarrassment in terms of the torch relay over the past week (frankly, things weren't pretty in London or San Francisco either). Citing a human rights banner at Paris city hall and a protestor trying to wrench the torch from a Chinese girl in a wheelchair, grassroots sentiment is again spiraling out of control, though only in cyberspace for now. Calls for boycotts of French companies -- including L'Oréal, Louis Vuitton and Givenchy -- have appeared on Web sites and chatrooms.  Meanwhile, Xinhua ran a story today biting back at the French media entitled "Paris slaps its own face."

The government will likely ride it out as long as is necessary for the people to vent. Then, as with Japan, they will call for a return to social harmony. Many people, including International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, believe the games will still be a success. But with so many potential provocations yet to unfold, it will be interesting to see how this PR mess gets cleaned up.

With all the debate over whether George W. Bush should attend the Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing this summer, you might think that it's a longstanding tradition for American presidents to attend these events. Actually, as Olympic historian David Wallechinsky tells Public Radio International, if Bush did go, he would be the first U.S. President to ever attend an opening ceremony on foreign soil.

As for Passport readers, it seems that a majority of you favor some form of boycott.

(Hat tip: Marc Ambinder)

The Olympic torch relay organizers have now resorted to switching their route at the last minute to avoid protests:

The first runner held the torch aloft and began the route, flanked by tall, blue-clad Chinese security officials. But the group then promptly disappeared into a large waterfront warehouse for a last-minute change of route by authorities to head off trouble. What Chinese Olympic organizers have called a "Journey of Harmony," quickly became the mystery of the missing flame.

Note to China and the IOC: At the point where you're actually hiding the torch from onlookers, it may be time to cut your losses and grab the next plane to Beijing.

In what his spokesman swears is not a jab at Beijing but a way of saving taxpayer money, Gordon Brown announced today that he'll skip the August 8 Olympics opening ceremony, opting to attend the closing ceremony instead. Perhaps those loud protests in London had some effect? And I'd put money on a similar announcement from Sarkozy any day now.

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If you've been following the Olympic flame's troubled progess (it braves hostile crowds in San Francisco today), you've no doubt noticed the phalanx of Chinese guards in blue track suits, baseball caps, and fanny packs who follow it everywhere. As Der Spiegel's Alexander Schwabe reports, the guards are just as sinister as you might imagine:

The agents are described as "employees of the Beijing Organizing Committee," which founded a "flame protection squad" in August 2007. [...]

According to Chinese media, the agents are members of the paramilitary People's Armed Police, which in China is responsible for fighting unrest and maintaining internal stability. Tens of thousands of the "Wujing," as the People's Armed Police are called in Chinese, recently took part in crackdowns against demonstrators in Tibet and neighboring regions.

"These men, chosen from around the country, are each tall and large and are eminently talented and powerful," the squad's leader Zhao Si was quoted as saying. "Their outstanding physical quality is not in the slightest inferior to that of specialized athletes."

They're also racking up an impressive list of complaints from protesters as well as relay organizers for their rude conduct and heavy-handed tactics. In some cases they've even gotten into fights with local police. Sebastian Coe, the head of Britain's organizing comittee, repeatedly described them as "thugs" to the media. Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently stated that the guards would not be welcome for the Australian portion of the relay.

Eighty-five thousand miles never felt so long.

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Training for the Olympics is tough, but dodging sniper bullets usually isn't part of a day's workout for most athletes. Unless you're Iraqi sprinter Dana Hussein Abdul-Razzaq. She and three other Iraqis so far have qualified for this summer's Olympics, and they are doggedly determined to keep training despite the lack of resources and security. Abdul-Razzaq doesn't have proper running shoes, and she trains on a pockmarked track that she isn't officially allowed to use. She and her coach regularly get caught up in sniper fire on the way to and from training.

Meanwhile, archer Ali Adnan, who was attacked by militants linked to al Qaeda in 2006, practices mainly in his backyard; it's too difficult to travel in and out of his neighborhood. These Iraqi athletes, as well the Afghan athletes featured in FP's recent photo essay, "The Olympians of Afghanistan," have definitely got the Olympic spirit.

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It was a predictably disastrous day for the Olympic torch procession in Paris. The flame was extinguished a total of four times to protect it from protesters and mayor Bertrand Delanoe cancelled a welcoming ceremony at City Hall after Green Party members hung a Tibetan flag over the building's facade.

As the confrontations and cancellations continue along the flame's route, one wonders how long the the International Olympic Committee will allow this humiliation to continue. China, meanwhile, continues to insist that the torch will pass through Tibet in June.

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Chinese security guards and Turkish police arrest an Uighur Muslim protestor during the Olympic torch ceremony, on April 03, 2008. A group of some 200 Uighur Muslims demonstrated against China before the Olympic torch ceremony near one of Turkey's most famous touristic destinations. Turkish police kept demonstrators away from the site where athletes planned to begin running with the torch through the city.

China said yesterday it had restored order to the heavily Tibetan areas of Western China. Now, it turns out, that claim may have been a bit of an exaggeration. London's Times is reporting from Sichuan that as many as 1,000 paramilitary police opened fire late last night on a group of several hundred monks and other protesters, killing eight and wounding dozens:

Chinese paramilitary police have killed eight people after opening fire on several hundred Tibetan monks and villagers in bloody violence.... Witnesses said the clash – in which dozens were wounded – erupted late last night after a government inspection team entered a monastery in the Chinese province of Sichuan trying to confiscate pictures of the Dalai Lama.

Here's the background:

Officials searched the room of every monk in the Donggu monastery, a sprawling 15th century edifice in Ganzi, southwestern Sichuan, confiscating all mobile phones as well as the pictures. When the inspectors tore up the photographs and threw them on the floor, a 74-year-old monk, identified as Cicheng Danzeng, tried to stop an act seen as a desecration by Tibetans who revere the Dalai Lama as their god king. A young man working in the monastery, identified as Cicheng Pingcuo, 25, also made a stand and both were arrested. The team then demanded that all the monks denounce the Dalai Lama... At about 6.30 p.m., the entire monastic body marched down to a nearby river where paramilitary police were encamped and demanded the release of the two men. They were joined by several hundred local villagers, many of them enraged at the detention of the 74-year-old monk Cicheng Danzeng, who locals say is well respected in the area for his learning and piety. Shouting 'Long Live the Dalai Lama,' 'Let the Dalai Lama come back' and 'We want freedom,' the crowd demonstrated until about nine in the evening. Witnesses said that at around that time, as many as 1,000 paramilitary police used force to try to end the protest and opened fire on the crowd.

Watch for more trouble when the Olympic torch comes to London this weekend.

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You had to see this one coming. Following Monday's embarrassing debacle in Ancient Olympia, the much touted 85,000-mile round the world relay of the Olympic torch -- dubbed the "Journey of Harmony" -- is reportedly being scaled back, most notably in San Francisco and Paris. San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsome confirmed yesterday that the planned events in the City by the Bay, the torch's only stop in North America, are already being altered.

Elsewhere, Chinese authorities are requesting that the "harmony" of the journey be imposed by force. They have requested, for instance, that the Australian military accompany the torch through Canberra next month. An Aussie government official characterized Beijing's level of anxiety over the possibility of protests at torch events this way: "They're absolutely wetting their pants...."

Australia denied China's request, according to reports, and doesn't plan to scale back events. San Francisco, Paris, and other major cities along the relay route should do the same. The concept of the Olympic torch relay was first conceived for the 1936 games held in Nazi Germany. It would be a sad irony if Beijing and the International Olympic Committee are allowed to continue their pathetic charade of denial. Where is Tom Lantos when we need him?

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?

A U.S. State Department issued "fact sheet" for Americans traveling to this summer's Olympic Games contains this little gem:

All visitors should be aware that they have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public or private locations. All hotel rooms and offices are considered to be subject to on-site or remote technical monitoring at all times."

The warning was issued last week. Chinese officials today said visitors have nothing to worry about, and that their surveillance efforts are "in accordance with international norms." Personally, if I were going to China for the Olympics, I wouldn't worry too much about the hotel rooms. I'd just be sure to leave my BlackBerry at home.