Walter Jon Williams explains the connection:

 I had an essay half-written on the Olympics before my life got busy, and then the Olympics were over, and the whole effort became irrelevant. But it’s suddenly grown a strange resonant pertinence, so here I go.

I intended to comment on the various Chinese attempts to control the Olympics and its public perception, and how so much backfired because autocratic Chinese officials were so deeply clueless as to the new technology, and to how a free information society operates. 

What I wasn’t expecting from Walter’s essay was  the painfully explicit parallels between the behavior of the Chinese government and the behavior of the authorities in the Twin Cities of Minnesota.

Do read the whole thing.