w.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/04/10/china-a-true-nightmare-on-april-fools-day/#comment-1427695

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Speaking of doping, it seems China has taken the preemptive measure of knocking out the Greek weightlifting team. Wouldn’t the Russian, US or German teams be obvious targets? Greece has an up and coming track and field team, but weightlifting has been a consistent award winner for Greece and the entire team has been taken out (which helps China’s team) due to an accidental “impurity” that made it into some training meds the team imports from …..China!

Let’s hear it for medical outsourcing from Mordor!

This story is apparently excerpted from Hong Kong’s English language daily, the South China Morning Post:
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A Shanghai pharma company may have managed to disqualify the entire Greek weightlifting team from the Olympics after shipping them tainted health supplements. A surprise inspection of the Greek team by the World Anti-Doping Agency revealed that 11 of the team?s athletes had unapproved substances in their systems. The Chinese firm has already apologized for providing the bad product, saying: ?We send [sic] you L-tyrosine mixed with something else that it [sic] only for research purposes.?

This is another one with quality fade written all over it. Looking to widen its margins, the factory probably cut an active ingredient with a molecular lookalike that was slightly cheaper. Since the general public to this day still doesn?t understand the extent to which quality fade occurs across China manufacturing, the recent supplement spike will likely be seen as sabotage. Some will suggest - if they are not already doing so - that China deliberately attempted to knock Greece out of the weightlifting competition.

Foreign athletes are going to be on high alert this summer in any event. The foreign catering companies that will set up shop in Beijing are promising to do an an excellent job of controlling quality, and they will be shipping in meat. All the same, they still need to source many ingredients in China. Athletes who somehow manage to bring their own food into China are going to have to get around rules that prohibit outside food in the athletes? village.

There is nothing that the Chinese are more proud of than their cuisine, and they are likely going to take dietary ambitions of foreign athletes the wrong way. By rejecting food products made in China, the foreign atheletes may inadvertently cause China more embarrassment than all of the protests combined. Protests abroad do not upset the Chinese. In fact, they offer proof to the Chinese that along with freedom comes an anything-goes social order, and it?s highly undesirable. The food snub is a different issue. It will genuinely sadden many Chinese, though, oddly enough, they won?t seem to understand the extent to which they have only themselves to blame.
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There is such a thing as dedication to a cause. If it is right, do it, even when there is no hope of success.

Do you think when Washington started the US revolution, he was certain he would succeed and not get crushed by the Brits - who was otherwise engaged by Napoleon in Europe at the time ?

And the 8.4 : 1 currency peg was too difficult to maintain. Talk has its place, but so does action and now is the time for action to carve up China.