I'd like to start by thanking the International Olympic Committee for selecting Beijing as the site for the 2008 Olympics. They couldn't have chosen a location more symbolic to the world today, and where we are headed if major changes aren't made in the global political economy.

As we on the streets all said nine years ago during the Seattle round of the WTO, it's a race to the bottom, and China's policies towards human rights, civil liberties, and environmental sustainability are at the bottom of the barrel. Nothing beats the Summer Olympics for holding a good race. It's an event scripted for TV: calm, clean, secure, organized to the hundredth-of-a-second. The Olympics provide a world-class facade to hide the half of the world undergoing war, food-shortages, and other indicators of extreme poverty.

No American Olympian is more popular than basketball star Lebron "King" James. As ESPN analyst Shelly Smith details, Lebron "already has two China-only marketed shoes and his own museum in Shanghai, filled with artifacts from his life, including a copy of his birth certificate. And right now, China estimates it has 300 million basketball fans--the same amount as the entire population in the United States."

James gets the situation. "At the end of the day we're talking about human rights," James told Smith. "People should understand that human rights and people's lives are in jeopardy. We're not talking about contracts here. We're not talking about money. We're talking about people's lives being lost and that means a lot more to me than some money or a contract."

Straight out of high school and before he was even drafted into the NBA, James signed a seven-year shoe contract with Nike worth more than $90 million. Considering that in 2006, the average city-dwelling Chinese person earned about $1300 a year, James's endorsement deal alone could employ some 69,000 Beijing citizens for a year.

Nike is doing their best to green-wash their overwhelming presence on Olympic athletic gear by presenting track and field Olympians with eco-friendly threads. Nike spokeswoman Morgan Shaw quipped, "We haven't sacrificed an ounce of performance to create a sustainable product." I wonder if Lebron would classify working conditions as sustainable or humane if he were to venture to a Chinese factory manufacturing his line of Nike shoes. But before we rush to judge the famous, don't forget that Americans purchase an estimated one billion Chinese-made garments each year.

My favorite Olympic themed poster so far is of five handcuffs arranged like the Olympic Rings--very popular near Chinese embassies throughout Europe. Author Naomi Klein noted that as part of their security preparations, Beijing has 300,000 security cameras and some 100,000 security officers designated solely to the Olympics. Six hundred sixty cities in China now have the surveillance cameras and spy gear necessary for "safe cities" distinction. Klein's Olympic equipment list includes "iris-scanners, 'anti-riot robots,' and facial recognition software ... free to be directed at striking workers and rural protestors" after the games have left.

My favorite pre-Olympics USA team photo was of the five or six members of the cycling team wearing black respiratory masks. US Olympic Committee members came to the diplomatic rescue. Chief US Olympic communications officer Darryl Seibel offered, "I will say this: I am not a scientist, but in my view that was unnecessary." The IOC's chief medical commissioner Arne Ljungqvist (presumably a scientist) said, "I would not carry a mask. I do not see a need for that.... This is not a measure I would recommend unless you have a particular disorder. I would not say that those (people) should not carry protection devices if they so feel, but I honestly doubt about the efficiency ... unless they are carrying a new generation of masks, I don't know." US Olympic Chief Jim Scherr called the cyclists "overly cautious" and said they didn't choose the "most opportune time" to don the masks.

As estimated 460,000 people in China die each year due to polluted air and water. Even after shutting down Beijing-area heavy industry for a month leading to the games, the level of air-pollution is unheard-of in Olympic history. At games' start, Beijing's air was some four-times above World Health Organization's threshold for safe human respiration.

Combined with intense heat and humidity of summer in Beijing, these cyclists or other long-distance and high-endurance athletes could face permanent respiratory system damage. Imagine if IOC Chairman Jacques Rogge's stammering excuses about how the grey air present was weather-related fog will reappear in future litigation. "The fog you see is based on humidity and heat. Of course, we prefer clean skies but the most important thing is the health of the athletes being protected."

The 2008 endurance events could show higher marks for athletes from nations in the Global South--countries that are the industrial wastelands for the consumers of the North. Their athletes would be more accustomed to training in such air conditions. My hometown of Butte, Montana, has a high-altitude speed skating training center for the Winter Olympics. I wonder if US Olympic coaches considered a high-pollution training center in preparation for the Beijing Games.

Chin's political economy, in relation to these Olympics, is being spoon-fed to American audiences by an NBC staff that includes as their China news analyst Joshua Cooper-Ramos, the managing director and partner of the Beijing office of Kissinger Associates. The golden question never to be addressed is whether American foreign policy towards China should change due to their appalling human rights and environmental records. It certainly won't show up in the 2008 US Presidential campaign. Jeffrey Bader, one of Barack Obama's chief Asia policy advisors, laid out US current events simply when he said, "There has been a general consensus on China dating back through seven presidents, since Nixon, and I see no reason to think that consensus will be broken. It would only be a fringe candidate who would look outside the consensus."

I'm sure the IOC understands the true winners of the China Olympics: the business interests of multinational corporations (we'd like to thank our official Olympic sponsors Coca Cola, McDonalds, GE ... and our official Olympic censors Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft) and the global elite of the richest one percent that needs China to keep profits rising and global stock and currency markets afloat. Until dethroned by US consumers, our own Mandarin class will continue to bring home the gold, at whatever cost to everything else.