http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor..._athens_venues
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The facilities would be leased or opened for commercial use to help pay back some of the $14.2 billion Greek officials said were spent on the most expensive Olympics in history.
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The most expensive Olympics in history? Okay, but China is planning on spending
more than twice that amount in Beijing in 2008. Somewhere in the low 30 billions. How can China afford that? I'll tell you what part of the reason is (facts taken from "Dude Where's My Country?"):
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Their government limits the media, the Internet, workers rights, religious freedom, and independent thinking. They also have a corrupt judicial system which ignores rule of law. Just a great place to do business. There are 400 McDonalds in China, and twice as many KFCs. (and that number is growing. The Chinese have an unexplainable love for fried chicken) The trade imbalance between the US and China is the largest ever. We get from China 6 times the amount that China gets from us. WalMart alone is a bigger Chinese trading partner than the whole of Russia and the whole of Great Britain. Both Governments make a mint from the trade relationship. But the US is willing to overlook the fact that the Chinese government lynches people in so called Mobile Killing Vans (I didnt believe it either, but the source is Amnesty International). No, they dont lynch people. Lynching is when a suspected criminal is killed without trial. They just kill your average citizens with little or no probable cause. I guess you'd call that government-sponsored murder.
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That's what I wrote once on another forum.
Everything is made in China these days. I'm pretty sure you can buy American flags made in China.
With the possible exception of Saudi Arabia, China has the most restrictve government of all the countries that we have at least a neutral opinion of (n/inc. Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Libya, Syria, etc.). I know that this is a polarizing issue. Liberals will say that we need to stop dealing with China until they come around to giving their people more freedoms (and perhaps ending the occupation of Tibet and allowing Taiwan complete independence - but that's another thread). And then conservatives/centrists (my grandfather for instance) will say that we need to deal with them, because dealing with them will force them to open up. I'm in the first group. Its true that things have gotten better in the last 10 years or so, but not that much. Certainly not proportional to all the money we've been pumping in to their economy. So I think it's a shame that we turn the other cheek on their strict controls and human rights violations (now or in the past) just so we can get some cheap nick-nacks at WalMart. I think that the only redeeming thing for awarding China the 2008 Olympics was awarding South Africa the 2010 Soccer World Cup. The first is being nice to a strictly run government and hoping they will change because of it. The second is awarding a now free country for changing their ways.
Anyway thats enough for me.