Yesterday, the Pew Research center released its comprehensive 2008's Global Attitudes Project.

Beside a global economic gloom in the forecast, with China and India as notable exceptions, the report noted some positive changes for the perception of the US abroad.

Five years after the start of the war in Iraq, the image of the US remains far less positive than it was before the war. However, the latest survey finds some encouraging signs for America's global image for the 1st time this decade.

You know what? We already know that giving the 2008 Olympics to China was a mistake by the International Olympic Committee. But it's possibly not working out so well for China either; the backlash has produced its own backlash of Chinese nationalism that could conceivably leave that country feeling and acting more isolated right at the moment its trying to take a pre-eminent position on the world stage.

The Times of London reports that Olympic athletes who "display Tibetan flags at Olympic venues -- including in their own rooms -- could be expelled from this summer’s Games in Beijing under anti-propaganda rules." This edict comes not from the despots of China but rather from the cowardly bureaucrats running the

As the crack down of the Chinese military  in Tibet is still going on, a more complex repression is affecting main land China for the access to certain links on the internet.

The Chinese Government apply a  sophisticated political censorship system; it is nicknamed the great firewall of China.

If you were in main land China and would try to run a search on, let's say : the great firewall of China  or " repression in Tibet ", the firewall would shut down access to applicable links or reset the connection.

A boycott of the Beijing Olympics makes moral sense. The Chinese government is monstrous -- a nasty, repressive regime with a shiny new capitalist veneer. And the point of the games this summer is not to promote universal brotherhood or prod Beijing's communist masters toward freedom so much as showcase emerging Chinese superiority as an authoritarian world power.