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<span class="date-display-single">Sun, 05/08/2012</span> </div>
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<div class="glw-authors">By <span class="glwnews-article-location"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2245">Tim Dobson</a></span></div><div class="field field-type-filefield field-field-image">
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<img src="http://www.greenleft.org.au/sites/default/files/imagecache/frontpage-lead-article/damien_hooper_jason_south.jpg" alt="" title="" class="imagecache imagecache-frontpage-lead-article imagecache-default imagecache-frontpage-lead-article_default" width="140" height="175" /> </div>
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<p>The Olympics are a sporting and social phenomenon without parallel. The Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Olympics was watched by close to 1 billion people.</p>
<p>Viewers for individual events can be remarkable. The website Sporting Intelligence said 184 million people watched a live women’s volleyball match between China and Cuba at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. A further 450 million people watched part of it.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/51794" target="_blank">read more</a></p>