wow factor

Going for Gold but at what cost?
Taxpayers have forked out $16.7 million through direct federal grants for each of the 13 gold medals won by Australia's Olympic team in Beijing.

For a country of 20 odd million people who bitch about taxes, petrol prices and Government waste at every opportunity, we seem more than willing to fork out a lot of money for an Olympic Gold Medal.

The individual and team performances are incredible and deserve generous support. However it's also valid to ask where the dollar pissing competition ends.

like Hiroshima after the bomb

McDonell and cameraman Rob Hill walked for 12 hours to get to the town of Ying Xiu, which was until last week an industrial town with several factories, and a population McDonell estimated would have been around 11,000.

"The whole place has been flattened. There's not one building left standing," he told ABC Radio's The World Today program.

"They've accounted for about 2,400 people, so presumably everybody else has died - including those attending a middle school and a primary school that were full at the time.

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Associated: Earthquake in Sichuan Province

In a well planned show of love for China, thousands of Chinese students descended on Canberra with a simple objective... drown out any pro Tibet activity.

This was not a spontaneous outpouring of Olympic love.

I drove she who knows best to work in the city at 7 am and watched organised groupings marching to their designated locations along the torch relay route.

China has a frail sense of confidence if it still believes sheer numbers are the solution to their issues.

At least they had no counter to the sky writer slowly composing Free Tibet across the blue morning sky.

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Image source: ABC News News coverage: ABC News

take a break from your made in China flat screen TV and switch on your made in China computer and watch some made in China history about Tiananmen Square June 1989

If you can't wait until the Games, don't feel bad about watching it now as it sure beats the current media coverage of Paris Hilton.

Note that the Google video is 52 minutes long.

Also note that Google, Yahoo and others have some questions to answer about their relationships with China