Who wants to know the truth about 2008 Olympics?

[bus man]

Originally Posted by Grandstander

Who do you see playing the OP when the movie "The Vanishing of the Whistle Blower" gets made?

Someone kind of small and a bit mousy, with a nervous twitch and a habit of surreptitiously glancing over his shoulders, as if afraid of being followed. Since the question is about the Beijing Olympics, this could be a good opportunity for an Asian male actor -- a demographic group sorely underrepresented in American cinema -- to really make his mark.

[2x3x29x41]

Originally Posted by HomelessLoser

0) WTF is the OP even talking about???

1) There's been a track record since '36 that any non-democratic regime hosting the Olympics will be overthrown in around ten years' time from the Games...I wonder if China will also finally ("finally" 'cause people have been predicting it for literally decades now) fail??

2) Speaking of '36: that was the first televised sports event or something...'08 was the first to be recorded in HD video -- but why isn't the HD video ever available????? I've even asked this question on a dedicated AV/HT forum to no response!!

Not really.

Only four non-democratic regimes have hosted Olympics in the post-war era.

USSR, 1980
It was never overthrown, per se. Gorbachev was, very briefly, but the Soviet regime remained intact. A few months later (1991) it folded itself due to irrelevance, but it wasn't overthrown.

Yugoslavia, 1984
Despite the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s whittling away at Yugoslavia, Serbia - the center of power - remained intact and relatively untouched by the fighting (until 1999 and the NATO bombing and intervention in Kosovo, anyway). Milosevic remained firmly in power until 2000, nearly seventeen years after the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo.

China, 2008
It's been eleven years and the regime in Beijing appears very stable and going nowhere anytime soon.

Russia, 2014
It's only been (almost) five years, and the petro-kleptocracy is probably no sure thing to hang on for another five. However, precedence suggests no reason to believe that the Russian preference even if Putin were removed against his will would be for replacing him with anything but another strongman ruling through force and intimidation.

Really, the whole 'track record' is nothing more than the fact that the first two non-democratic regimes to host the Olympics in the latter half of the 20th century were part of the Eastern Bloc and happened to do so in the decade before the Bloc imploded.

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by bus man

Someone kind of small and a bit mousy, with a nervous twitch and a habit of surreptitiously glancing over his shoulders, as if afraid of being followed. Since the question is about the Beijing Olympics, this could be a good opportunity for an Asian male actor -- a demographic group sorely underrepresented in American cinema -- to really make his mark.

Well, yeah, that would be okay. But I'm thinking this will be a big budget Hollywood production, so of course the Asian playing the WB will have to be a supporting character, with the main character being the white cop charged with investigating the disappearance...who goes on to discover the actual conspiracy. He will be assisted by a 22 year old blond who is built like a Playboy centerfold but is also the world's leading expert in whatever the hero needs to know to unravel the mystery. And oh, she also has other worldly martial arts skills. The rest of the supporting cast can be the standard ethnic/sex orientation balance.

[Frihed89]

Usain Bolt?