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Boris Johnson may have ruffled some feathers in Beijing by declaring London the "sporting capital of the world" and boasting about Britain inventing ping pong. But the London mayor still had some kind words for China after his Olympic visit.

Chinese bloggers and members of the Chinese media, on the other hand, did not take kindly to the performance of Britain -- and Johnson in particular -- during the Olympic changeover ceremony. One blogger blasted Johnson for not buttoning his suit jacket, while another said the mayor appeared "rude and arrogant" while interacting with his counterpart from Beijing. 

Some of the harshest words, however, were reserved for Jimmy Page and David Beckham:

Unfortunately, the singer and Jimmy Page are absolutely not famous enough to be known or recognised by millions of the Chinese audiences. As for David Beckham, he was supposed to kick the football towards the red circle in the centre of the Bird's Nest, in the end, just like any of his penalties at a football match, he totally missed it. 

Ouch. The Brits may not be rallying for Chinese press freedom anytime soon.

Living under a totalitarian regime requires a daily suspension of disbelief. Nowhere is that more true today than in North Korea, where otherwise ethical people contort themselves into untenable moral positions because they’ve bought into the oft-repeated notion that their country is “Paradise on Earth.”

That's just a snippet of Kim Hyun Sik's fascinating secret history of Kim Jong Il in the latest issue of FP. As the Dear Leader's former teacher, Kim offers a rare portrait of the dictator as a young man, and the suspension of reality that he demands his countrymen participate in every day.

An important element of that effort is, of course, fear, but also a bombardment of propaganda. The California Literary Review recently published a handful of incredible propaganda posters from North Korea, and you might imagine that there's a common theme: Death to the United States. More posters have recently been compiled in this volume by art collector David Heater.

Here are some of the best posters from the CLR's collection with translations:

“When provoking a war of aggression, we will hit back, beginning with the US!”

“Let’s extensively raise goats in all families!”

“Do not forget the US imperialist wolves!”

Just asking. Because it's really annoying that nearly every time I hit the NYT homepage, the paper has an above-the-fold picture giving away that evening's big events. Would it kill the Gray Lady to tuck its Olympics coverage somewhere out of sight, so that people who actually want to enjoy the games can do so in peace?

Nissan-Renault is finding itself in hot water for an advertisement for its new Tiida that recently aired on Israeli television. The ad, which depicts a group of Saudis attacking the fuel-efficient car, has drawn the ire of Arab states for its alleged racism:

It's my opinion that Nissan made a huge error by igniting these [racist] instincts," official Hani al-Wafa told MBC TV, a Saudi-run station headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. "We need to apply punishments... against these things. In order for Nissan to keep its interests in the region, it must apologize."

Though a Nissan spokeswoman in Israel defended the spot as humorous, the company has apparently distanced itself from the ad and canceled the campaign, which had been developed by an Israeli marketing firm. Of course, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, the ad lives on online:

Nissan is not new to the risqué viral video business. The company may have gone too far with this one, although I'm not sure if there would have been such an outcry had the ad aired anywhere other than Israel.

For what it's worth, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn is of Lebanese descent.

The veepstakes wait is driving ABC's Jake Tapper mad:

Does it mean anything that the wife of one of Sen. Barack Obama's veep finalists, Susan Bayh, just got her hair and nails done?

Or that she has also told neighbors that she's sorry about the media pack about to descend upon her Washington, DC, neighborhood?

MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images

Here's a conundrum for you, dear readers.

In days of yore, it was handy for journalists to write "the Kremlin" to refer to the people in charge of Russia. It's a word that has a certain allure and mystique to it, and using it helps avoid cumbersome repetition. As a short word, it's also great for headlines.

But now that Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, is not really running the country from his Kremlin office, and its prime minister, Vladimir Putin, is demonstrably in control, this usage isn't always accurate anymore.

This headline, for instance, is OK because it's technically true. Medvedev did sign the truce:

Kremlin Signs Truce but Resists Quick Pullout

But this one is not, because it may not be "the Kremlin's" policy at all:

The Kremlin's New Containment Policy

So, does this mean we ink-stained wretches can no longer always use "the Kremlin" as a shorthand for "the Russian government"? And what of "Kremlinology"?

Or has "the Kremlin" become part of the lexicon now, akin to saying "Moscow" or somesuch, to such an extent that the details don't matter? After all, it might get confusing to refer to the "White House," which is where Putin's new office is located, when talking about decisions the Russian government makes.

Discuss.

Passport reader Eric Jon Magnuson sends along the following gem:

Readers of the newest website of Vietnam's government-controlled press can't complain of any hidden bias in reporting. Propaganda magazine, the official organ of Vietnam's Committee for Propaganda and Training, launched its website (www.tuyengiao.vn) Monday, featuring articles about Ho Chi Minh Thought and a visit by representatives of the Russian Communist Party. [...]

[I]n Vietnam, public-service campaigns on everything from HIV prevention to wearing motorbike helmets are termed "propaganda." The division between politics and other kinds of social activism is less clear than in multiparty democracies.

Here's an incredible video that CNN obtained from a Turkish television station whose reporter was shot in the face in Georgia:

Picking up on Katie's post: What happens when you give in to a massive lobbying effort, somehow believe bogus promises of improvement, wallow in corruption, and ultimately give the Olympics to a country that never deserved them? Just ask the International Olympic Committee:

IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said journalists should not be prevented from doing their jobs, a day after John Ray of London-based ITV News said he was wrestled to the ground and briefly held by police who apparently mistook him for a protester.

Asked repeatedly if IOC officials are embarrassed that China was not living up to its promises, Davies would only say they are happy with the way China is running the sporting events."

And, of course, the opening ceremony was lovely.

I'm hardly the first to say this, but absurdly long book subtitles are a smallish pet peeve of mine. And so, while I'm loath to throw any unintentional advertising Dick Morris's way, I have to say that his most recent book takes the "please stop" award for longest (and worst) subtitle of the summer:

Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbyists for Foreign Governments Are Scamming Us ... and What to Do About It

Here at FP, we love Caijing. We named its fearless managing editor, Hu Shuli, to our list of the world's top 100 public intellectuals. And this is how John Pomfret, the Washington Post's Outlook section editor, described the publication earlier this year in a fascinating review for Foreign Policy:

An amalgam of Forbes, Fortune, and BusinessWeek, with a muckraking edge that makes it hard to categorize, Caijing is China's leading financial magazine. With a circulation of about 100,000, Caijing focuses most of its energy on battling the crony capitalism widespread in China's business world. Occasionally, it takes even bigger risks by tackling Chinese government officials themselves, such as with the magazine's in-depth and influential coverage of the SARS epidemic in 2002.

That said, this is a pretty unfortunate truncation boo-boo:

The real headline is below:

Is the Washington Post having a little fun with the New York Times?

Here's a headline from Monday's NYT:

Ragtag Taliban Show Tenacity in Afghanistan

And here's today's offering from WaPo:

A Ragtag Pursuit of the Taliban

¿Quien es mas ragtag?

FP readers can catch John Hoberman, the author of "Think Again: The Olympics," on The Diane Rehm Show this morning on WAMU 88.5 FM. (If you miss it, the audio file will be posted online here.)

He'll also be on KCBS today at 10:30 a.m. and on KCRW's "To the Point" at 2:10 p.m. EDT. Check 'em out.

UPDATE: You can listen to Hoberman on KCRW here:

YouTube and even the more freewheeling LiveLeak have both apparently yanked a video showing a dress rehearsal for the Olympics opening ceremony, citing copyright concerns. It's not clear to me whether that would refer to the South Korean network that originally aired the footage, China, NBC (which bought the rights to broadcast the games), or the International Olympic Committee, but I am trying to find out.

When my colleague Travis posted the video last night, he wrote: "Maybe mighty China doesn't have as much control over the Internet as it would like to believe." Perhaps he was wrong?

UPDATE: Here we go again. Chinese Internet users are enraged at South Korea.

... Reuters reports that SBS pulled the footage off its own Web site Thursday afternoon. So, presumably we can rule the South Korean network out, unless YouTube and LiveLeak pulled their footage earlier in response to a request from SBS and then SBS did so later in response to a demand from China. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

Well, sort of. The seemingly ubiquitous presidential candidate has shelled out $5 million to join McDonalds and Anheuser-Busch as major advertiser during NBC's coverage of next month's Olympics.

The ad buy is the largest by any presidential candidate on network television in the last 16 years, AdAge reports:

While Rudy Giuliani's campaign did a tiny buy to air political ads on "Fox News Sunday" in consecutive weeks, the Obama campaign's spending on the high-rated and expensive Olympics top anything that has been done on network TV by presidential candidates in years.

Traditionally, campaigns target cheaper cable ads in crucial swing states. The last candidate to buck the trend was Bob Dole in 1996. Flush with youthful exuberance and record-breaking cash on hand, the Obama team thinks its campaign will meet a different fate than Dole's.

Sure, Barack Obama is quite popular in Europe and has received his fair share of endorsements from unusual areas, but the Arab media has had some other things to say.

Courtesy of the Anti-Defamation League, a sampling of political cartoons from Middle Eastern media sources:

Although the ADL lists the collection under the banner of "Anti-Semitism in the Arab/Muslim World," you might want to take this with a grain of salt. Some of these cartoons are undoubtedly offensive (including some toward Obama's race), but others simply echo familiar claims and criticisms regarding the close U.S.-Israel relationship. Personally, I've seen similar cartoons in the Western media as well.

If anything, these cartoons just reinforce the Walt-Mearsheimer argument about the wellspring of anti-Americanism in many parts of the Arab world: "It's Israel, Stupid!"

The McCain campaign has taken to mocking the press corps left behind to cover the Arizona senator while Barack Obama is overseas, Hotline reports. Here are the luggage tags McCain staffers jokingly put on reporters' bags yesterday:

Chuck Todd and company at MSNBC's First Read comment, "Why does McCain think belittling his own press corps is a good idea?" Good question.

The September cover of Esquire is going to be pretty cool. An electronic ink diplay, built on the same technology that E Ink used in the Amazon Kindle, will flash the words "the 21st Century Begins." The logistics of pulling of this feat are a story in globalization:

First Esquire had to make a six-figure investment to hire an engineer in China to develop a battery small enough to be inserted in the magazine cover. The batteries and the display case are manufactured and put together in China. They are shipped to Texas and on to Mexico, where the device is inserted by hand into each magazine. The issues will then be shipped via trucks, which will be refrigerated to preserve the batteries, to the magazine's distributor in Glazer, Ky.

So, has the magical world of Harry Potter and its animated Daily Prophet sprung into being? Esquire Editor-in-Chief David Granger sees a bright future for e-ink:

Pointing to the prototype sitting on a conference room table, Mr. Granger said, "The possibilities of print have just begun. In two years, I hope this looks like cellphones did in 1982, or car phones."

Alternatively, it could look a lot like this.

It's going to be hard to top this Reuters headline for hilarity:

Chavez may hug king, won't shut up

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday he would like to give the king of Spain a hug when he visits Europe next week, but the outspoken leader, referring to a diplomatic spat last year, said he will not shut up.

Jarod Perkioniemi/Multi-National Forces Iraq Public Affairs via Getty Images Lorie Jewell/U.S. Army via Getty Images Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images Thaier al-Sudani-Pool/Getty Images. Collage by Blaine Sheldon

John McCain is having trouble attracting media attention for his New Hampshire tour:

In Manchester last night, there was just one reporter and one photographer waiting for McCain as his plane -- a white, blue and gold Boeing 737-400 emblazoned with his campaign slogan, "Reform, Prosperity, Peace" -- touched down on the Wiggins Airways tarmac.

Also worth noting: Getty Images hasn't posted a photograph of the Arizona senator since Sunday. During that time, Getty has posted roughly 40 photos of Obama, depending on how you count.