Beijing's propaganda extravaganza.(THE LAST WORD)

Perhaps, amidst the non-stop glowing reportage on China's 17 days of Olympic glory, you happened to catch (buried in back section of the newspaper--or some equally remote web posting) a story about Wu Dianyuan and Wang Xiuying. The two frail, old widows in their late 70s were arrested and face possible prison time in China's notorious penal system. Their crime? Applying for a legal permit to protest peacefully in the officially designated protest area near the Olympic Village. Like hundreds of thousands of other Beijing residents, their homes were seized and bulldozed to make way for Olympic venues. They have been trying for years to get compensation. Theirs is one of many stories showing the real face of the "New China" that has been obscured by the fluff and party-line propaganda that was peddled as news and informed commentary during the Olympic Games.

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Yes, the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics--like the opening ceremony--was an eye-popping, whiz-bang, extravaganza of music, dance, video, gymnastics and pyrotechnics. It was a fitting cap to a three-week triumph of (almost) flawlessly choreographed communist propaganda.

The entire presentation of the Beijing Olympics, as well as control over the news coverage, was the bailiwick of the Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee of the People's Republic of China. "Propaganda Department"? No, that's not my name for it; that's the ChiCom's own official moniker for their equivalent of Joseph Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry. See for yourself at the PRC's Propaganda Department website, which you can translate into English using free translation software such as Babblefish.com. The website is: http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64114/75332/.

The Beijing regime vastly outdid Goebbels and Hitler, who similarly used the 1936 Nazi Olympics to showcase "the New Germany." But then, you can buy a whole lotta bling and bang for $44 billion, the low-side estimate of the PRC's outlay for the Games. Which makes China's gold-medal haul undoubtedly the most expensive gold ever mined.

"The Beijing Olympic Games is a testimony of the fact that the world has rested its trust upon China," declared Liu Qi, president of the Beijing Organizing Committee, in his speech at the closing ceremony. To the degree that the world has indeed "rested its trust upon China," we can give thanks to the likes of Henry Kissinger & Associates, NBC, and public relations behemoth Hill & Knowlton, who take home, respectively, the gold, silver, and bronze medals ...