Tag Archive for 'beijing'

more on the chinese olympic hoo-har

Published
by
Aaron
on April 8, 2008
in asia, politics, sports and uk
. Closed

Further to my post yesterday, Mr Eugenides has posted an “all bases covered” rant on the pro-Tibet protests.

Here’s the money-quote: -

Generally speaking, and with some exceptions, I am not in favour of sporting boycotts, at least not in isolation. It seems particularly harsh, for one thing, to pick on sportsmen and expect them to salve the conscience of a nation when businessmen line their pockets unmolested by such high-minded considerations. No-one, I notice, is proposing that we stop buying Chinese widgets, or boycott the Jade Inn on the high street, so why should it fall to kayakers and three-day-eventers to wrap themselves in the flag of Amnesty International?

So, whatever else all this may be, it’s not easy. Easy to know who’s in the right, where our sympathies should lie (at least for most of us - of which more in a moment), but harder to know exactly what to do that has any prospect of actually changing anything. Talk is cheap, and there’s a lot of it about.

[...]

Having made that wretched decision, we are now being made to look like impotent fools by the Communist leadership. Is it to much to hope that someone elected to speak on our behalf calls a spade a spade, and goes beyond tepid diplomatic boilerplate to tell the regime in Beijing what we truly think of them, not just in relation to Tibet but the civil liberties of their own people? What are they going to do, stop manufacturing Star Wars toys for Christmas? I hardly fucking think so.

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torched

Published
by
Aaron
on April 7, 2008
in asia, economics, europe, politics, uk and world
. Closed

Those Parisians have extinguished the Olympic flame.

Twice.

Apparently is was so that the torch could escape protesters and be hidden on a bus. Things are getting nasty, as we saw in London, where the pocket-sized Konnie Huq was mugged by pro-Tibet protesters.

No doubt these campaigners will watch themselves on the news tonight. On their Chinese-made TVs.

You see this is the problem with challenging the Beijing Olympics: it’s so thoroughly hypocritical. Western life is utterly intertwined with the behemothic and authoritarian Chinese state . Our homes are filled with products made by those who suffer under the Chinese communist party and its poisonous and corrupt polity.

It’s not just our politicians - and their sycophantic engagements with Chinese officials - that help justify this brutal regime, it’s all of us. We’re all part of the system that crushed the nascent Tibetan uprising. We support the Chinese system of political and religious oppression by buying its products. We help justify it.

So what’s the point of trashing the ceremonial running of the torch? Our politicians have no power over the Chinese state. We’re heavily indebted to Beijing and we’re falling over ourselves to attract more and more investment.

Brown and Sarko may accept the protesters right to protest, but they both know it won’t change a thing. We need them. They need us.

This post was written on an Apple Macintosh. Assembled in the People’s Republic of China.

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