Time to Consider Boycotting the Beijing Olympics

[JCMach1]

Whether our government decides to boycott, I will NOT watch one minute of these games. What was the IOC thinking?



China vows 'harsh' Tibet measures

The Dalai Lama has accused China of 'rule of
terror" in Tibet

Tibet's governor has pledged to deal harshly with protesters who committed "serious crimes" amid rare unrest in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa.

Qiangba Puncog, however, on Monday promised leniency for those who "show remorse" ahead of a midnight deadline for rioters to hand themselves in.

"We have been dealing with the incident in accordance with the law."

"China is a country ruled by law. No country would allow this violence," the government chief in Tibet, said on last week's rioting in Lhasa, and the spread of Tibetan unrest to neighbouring Chinese provinces over the weekend.

The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, had a day earlier called for an international inquiry into what he said was China's "rule of terror" and "cultural genocide" in Tibet.

Speaking from Dharmsala in northern India on Sunday, he said: "They simply rely on using force in order to simulate peace, a peace brought by force using a rule of terror."

Lhasa, meanwhile was quiet but tense days after Tibetans torched buildings and stoned Chinese residents in the fiercest challenge to Beijing's rule over the region in nearly two decades.

Hundreds of police and soldiers patrolled the streets, enforcing a strict curfew.

Conflicting casualties

Qiangba told reporters 13 "innocent civilians" were killed during the riots in Lhasa. He said the civilians were "burned or hacked to death" by the protesters and denied the government had used lethal force to quell the unrest... http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2D6B3504-D8C9-464B-9994-4B699C7A16C9.htm




Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.

Hundreds of cats a day are being rounded and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around.

Then they are trucked to what animal welfare groups describe as death camps on the edges of the city. The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=528694&in_page_id=1811



China's thirst for oil is causing bloodshed. So says New York-based nongovernmental organization Human Rights First, which on Mar. 13 released a report linking China's rising imports of Sudanese oil with sales of Chinese small weapons to Khartoum, used to further the deadly conflict in the western region of Darfur. The report is part of a broader campaign called Made in China: Stop Arms Sales to Sudan, timed to coincide with the runup to the Beijing Olympics in August. "China's huge appetite for oil from Sudan filled Khartoum's coffers, enabling Sudan to buy Chinese arms," says Betsy Apple, a Human Rights First program director and author of the report. "It's a toxic oil-for-arms relationship." Apple says the group is calling for China to halt arms sales to Sudan immediately... http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2008/gb20080314_430126.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_global+business




Some 1.5 million Chinese have been forced from their homes during preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, a rights group said Tuesday.

China rejected the figures from the Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions as "groundless" and said some 6,000 families had been compensated and properly resettled.

"Our research shows that little has changed since 1988 when 720,000 people were forcibly displaced in Seoul, South Korea, in preparation for the Summer Olympic Games," said Jean du Plessis, COHRE's executive director. "It is shocking and entirely unacceptable that 1.25 million people have already been displaced in Beijing, in preparation for the 2008 Games, in flagrant violation of their right to adequate housing."... http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2007-06-05-3431055449_x.htm

[Blue_In_AK]

1. I completely agree

for many, many reasons.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. Consider? It's been the plan from day one. Despite what they say

it isn't that hard to live practically China free, it's just more expensive.

[JCMach1]

3. Not just individuals... the world needs to boycott these games

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. Individuals are the world. They have to come to their own conclusion

it's not as if what goes on in china is any secret.

[Hippo_Tron]

4. I don't see how this will get China to change anything

Trade sanctions are usually a miserable failure at getting governments to change their behavior and often they just hurt ordinary people. Boycotting the Olympics is kinda like a really really mild symbolic form of trade sanctions.

[JCMach1]

13. And outright capitulation and looking the other way has done what?

Ask the Dalai Lama...

[Hippo_Tron]

14. It will do about the same as boycotting the Olympics

Getting states to change their behavior without military force is a difficult task. I'd rather we acknowledged that and started working on solutions rather than taking symbolic gestures like boycotting the Olympics and pretending like we're doing something.

[better tomorrow]

5. China will control the weather on opening day.....

China plans to halt rain for Beijing Olympics
'Weather modification' team will manipulate the clouds in summer to try to keep the open-air stadium dry.

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 31, 2008

Beijing, China

It is yet another attempt by man to triumph over nature.

Determined not to let anything spoil their party, organizers of the 2008 Summer Olympics said Wednesday that they will take control over the most unpredictable element of all -- the weather.

While China's Olympic athletes are getting ready to compete on the fields, its meteorologists are working the skies, attempting the difficult feat of making sure it doesn't rain on the Aug. 8 opening ceremonies.

"Our team is trained. Our preparations are complete," declared Wang Jianjie, a spokeswoman from the Beijing Meteorological Bureau, addressing a news conference at the headquarters of the Beijing organizing committee.

The Chinese are among the world's leaders in what is called "weather modification," but they have more experience creating rain than preventing it. In fact, the techniques are virtually the same.

[better tomorrow]

8. but, don't forget...Mitt Romney probably did the same thing in Salt Lake

remember how nice the blue skies were each day and how much it snowed at night????

We will probably have more tornadoes here this summer. I did hear that today on the news.

[VeraAgnes]

7. Your headline; it caught

my eye..There was a guy on the nighttime AM radio; The Coast to Coast program with George Norey?? Well, he predicted that we wouldn't have an 08 Olympics. He apparently predicted this in 02-03 which the host verified. He repeated this and other stuff as well.
Just go to their website and look through the "past shows" and read the synopsis.

[DesertRat]

9. Then someone needs to tell *

He's planning to attend.

[tomreedtoon]

10. NO! Let him be surprised.

In fact, in his mental state, he could be alone in a field of toxic waste and believe it to be the Olympics, and shake imaginary hands and do a victory dance as he hallucinates Americans winning every event.

[VeraAgnes]

11. Here is the link

to the nutzie guy on Coast 2 Coast

http://www.johntitor.com/

just for the fun of trying to stay awake; take a gander.

[TML]

12. I'm not watching

USA Hockey isn't playing for two more years.

[Lasher]

15. Carter called for a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Do you know why? Because the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan. 60 other nations also boycotted the 1980 Games.

The Soviets retaliated by boycotting the 1984 games in Los Angeles. In a crowning bit of Cold War irony, while the Soviets boycotted, China returned to the Olympics in 1984 after a 32-year absence.