Quote of the Day

"We Chinese people love the Olympics and support the Olympics, and that's why there are no protesters,"

… and the white wash continues.

If it weren’t for turning on the TV early this morning looking for USA vs. Germany in hoops and accidentally running across a small news item on NBC’s crappy local affiliate which reported on a group of Christians refusing to leave Beijing’s airport until their confiscated Bibles were returned, we would never have heard about it.

Good to know the Chinese “take care of” Bibles the way they take care of dissidents. Story here.


The Chinese promise of setting up “protest pens” for peaceful Chicomm-sanctioned demonstrations was made just to get everyone off their back as there have been, to date, zero demonstrations in the 3 designated venues… one of which is in an amusement park where there is a $10 fee just to get in.

In fact, the Chinese police state can be commended for streamlining their processes to the degree that they don’t waste energy by going out and finding the malcontents, they simply just wait until the malcontents come down to the Olympic security offices to apply for a protest and arrest them there.

Nicholas Krisof of the New York Times decided to take a spin on the protest merry-go-round. His dizzying account of stonewalling, excessive red tape, mountains of conditions and forms all smothered in a thick layer of mind-numbing bureaucracy can be found here.

Amazingly, though, at the end of the article Kristof gets all fair’n’balanced, essentially shrugging his shoulders and implying, “hey, could be worse”… the totality of his little experiment is kind of brushed-off as nothing more than a trip to the DMV. Kristoff: “China is changing: it is no democracy, but it’s also no longer a totalitarian state.”

We don’t want to get into the parsing of political terminology but when we think of a planned, centralized economy, the state being that which "guarantees security and prosperity" (quote from the Opening Ceremonies), young children ripped from their families and taken to Olympic factories where they only see their parents once a year, people being arrested for merely attempting to file paperwork for a protest and a completely empty protest zone, we will just paraphrase a quote used during the primaries,

“China is (still) totalitarian, enough.”

Olympic Update: Widening Fissures

The bile that had subsided somewhat over the first week of the Olympics has risen again as the Guardian has footage here of Chinese police man-handling Free Tibet protestors and reporters that were merely covering the protest… something that the IOC claimed reporters would freely be allowed to do.

Quote from the IOC: “The IOC does disapprove of any attempts to hinder a journalist who is going about or doing his job seemingly within the rules and regulation,” IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies tells reporters, according to AFP. “We do not want to see it happening again.” (italics ours)

Rules of engagement for the press has such a nice totalitarian feel to it, yes?

Captain Ed thinks the Olympic movement may never recover from the habitual caving of the IOC to the Chi-comms. We won’t go that far because, hell, if it doesn’t make it to the T.V., then it just didn’t happen.

NBC, your call.

'08 Beijing Olympics Update

(One in an occasional series provided during the run-up to the ’08 Summer Games in Beijing, China. Archived posts in this series can be accessed by entering “Olympics” in the blog search box above).

ESPN ran an Outside the Lines segment last night featuring comments LeBron James made this past spring with respect to speaking out against China’s human rights abuses (segment can be found at the top of the queue on the right hand side of page, here). In May, James said that he would help raise awareness as to China’s involvement with the Sudanese government and that government’s de-facto sponsorship of genocide in Darfur.

But now that James and the rest of the team are in Beijing, putting the finishing touches on preparations for the Games that start this Friday, he and the rest of the team are singing another tune. To a person, including the coaches, the party line is “we’re just here to play hoops” and the “Olympics is not the venue for politics”.

It was suggested that David Stern eyeing China's 300+ million basketball fans (as many fans in China as people living here in the States) would not take kindly to any rhetoric that would chill potential customers.

What, if any, obligation do athletes, particularly those from the most high-visibility and freest nation on the planet have to speak out against China’s policies ranging from Darfur, Tibet, internal dissident groups, etc.?

Should the basketball players, for instance, just let their on-court excellence be a witness to freedom and liberty and just be gracious and humble guests by keeping their mouths shut or has China’s egregious behavior demanded that a bold stance and protest against these actions be displayed during the Games? Or is there some sort of middle ground where a subtle show of solidarity can be shown towards China’s oppressed without causing a scene?

Please feel free to comment and participate in out poll on the right-hand margin.