This drumbeat leading up to a boycott of the Beijing Olympics is a bad idea. Protests are fine; everyone talk about China and its sins. But boycotting the Olympics will accomplish nothing. The U.S. did it before and, of course, we just got it handed right back to us when it was our turn to host. I shudder to imagine the protests that would surround the torchbearers if the U.S. were hosting the games this year.
The Olympics is a dream worth working for -- one time when all countries put their idealogies aside, bring their finest young people together and let them get to know each other. It's OK to aspire to behave like a peaceful world even though we are far from perfect. Move forward.
With my years of participating in intercultural education, I believe peace comes only with deep understanding. If you haven't seen the Op-ed column written by Chinese actress and director Joan Chen in today's Bee, don't miss it.
The Olympics in Beijing are an incentive for this notoriously closed society to open up. The secret to persuading China to change its ideas is for the people living there to see more of the world, not less of it.
You say you shudder to imagine the protests that would surround the torchbearers should the U.S. be hosting the Olympics this year. Oh if only the rest of the world liked us. The truth is for most of the world we are the ones who they call or depend on in their time of need.A dirty little secret but true.What they say in public and desire in private are two very different things. And just what is meant by "a deep understanding"? More jibberish that's what.Let the games and the protests go on.In the big picture both are only symbolic and thus meaningless.
I believe if they want to dictate to the people of China and the people choose to live like that well thats up to them but not putting it on everyone else while hosting a national event and shame on those that selected them to hold the Olympics there. If someone wants to believe in God or be gay that is an individuals right.
maybe this a global response, ( albeit, rather late,) to the idea of "regime change" in general,....though brutal in it's implementation, (most monastaries were destroyed for target practice,) the Chinese have always claimed they were "liberating" the Tibetans...sometimes, Gail, protest is all desperate people have left. The Olympics provide an international forum. The violence is unwelcome, and cosmicly ironic, but the world IS paying attention.
Most folks are talking of boycotting the opening ceremony, not the Olympics (Merkl of Germany, Brown of the UK for example.) We have a friend whose daughter has been chosen for the water polo team and it would be so sad, after a years of hard work, to deny her this! She is representative, I think, of many athletes. As to the opening ceremony, Bush is like someone invited to the boss' house for a party. China is financing us, so he has no choice. We have lost our freedom to protest China by relying on them for our standard of living through the purchase of our government securities.
What are we talking about here?
We better support China otherwise they will forbid us from the shirts on our backs, much less our briefs.
Brown is not boycotting the Olympic ceremony. If he isn't able to attend it's not related to any political statement.
This is a widely circulated misunderstanding.
How about getting every body together that has something to protest and making it an Olympic event.The whole Olympic thing is a big bore that has lost its appeal.Who cares about a bunch of pampered amateur athletes. They've added so many ridiculous thing s that it has lost its meaning and with the corruption,protests and drug problems it's a joke that the networks hope we will buy into with its' phoney patriotism angle. It's all about money and little else.I will not be watching as a form of protest and will award myself a medal to fulfill my Olympic dream.
The key to changing China would be changing the leadership. The people of china only know what their leader tells them. The problem with China is we don’t agree with their views or actions that come from their leaders. Unless we plan to invade and occupy another country, (it’s worked so well in the past) we need to just except it and “build a bridge” (to get over it) and support our athletes representing America.