Look closely and you'll see the haze rising from the stadium.

This is no doubt more of the extreme air pollution prevalent in Beijing - something which is unconscionable on first principles, but even more so for the capital city of a so-called "progressive" country.

Hopefully, many Olympic athletes will refuse to endanger their health, boycott the upcoming games, and make it very publicly clear why they are doing so.

This will result in a severe national loss of face for China, which ought to be a loud and clear wake-up call for their government. The country needs very much to have its international nose rubbed good and hard in its many failures. Extreme pollution of every type, human rights violations, endangerment of the global population via exported products, etc., etc., etc. The list unfortunately goes on and on.

Will China make any concerted national effort to become a good global neighbor? Perhaps, but let us not hold our collective breath waiting for that to happen, lest we end up looking like giant Smurfs!

its unlikely that any boycott will result in any effect on China's nat'l policies or its incredible arrogance towards the health of its own nation, and the nations it exports to. The country is severely oppressive of its citizens and arrogant due to its importance to the American economy and imports. They know that if we piss them off, they will stop loaning us money, and the whole shell/structure of debt our country has built up, will collapse, turning america into a 3rd world country... it is becoming an inevitability, w/ each and every american citizen $16k in debt from our $32Trillion deficit... but they are at least allowing us to flounder a little longer, and put ourselves more into debt... but hey, the only Pres candidate who can actually address this doesn't get a stint of media coverage anyways... Good luck to us America... when the $ collapses in 4 yrs, we'll all be living in serftitude... then what?... I say boycott the Olympics anyways...