Cancel the Show

Shame on the International Olympic Committee.

I'm not an anti-globalist, I have no problem with trade with China because I think commerce will raise the level of wealth and education in that country to a level where the despots running it will not be able to hold on to power. All we have to do is look at Cuba to see what an embargo can accomplish: it's world news when people get limited freedom to own a cell phone in Havana, even if they can't get any bars on it.

But the Chinese government has got to go. There's no other term for it, the whole regime is flat-out evil. If war were actually a means of liberation (I think Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, etc., demonstrate that it rarely is), it'd be time to invade China about, oh, 60 years ago.

So I made the mistake of listening to NPR tonight, and I heard a story about how despite the promises that free speech would be upheld, that the athletes, for instance, in the coming Olympiad would be free to speak their minds at least outside the official arena, that push comes to shove, China will probably eject them if they say 'Free Tibet.' Even people who have bought tickets are not guaranteed visas to visit the games, and if they break the rules by simply criticizing a regime that has no moral right to even exist, whose leaders all deserve to be hanged if Saddam deserved to be, they'll likely be kicked out of the country.

Remember Tiananmen Square? Makes Kent State look like small beer, no offense to those hippies who got senselessly gunned down by those shithead National Guardsmen.

So here's the deal: besides the whole Tibet problem, besides China's continued insistence that it is the legitimate government of Taiwan (imagine your attitude toward England if it continued to assert that we were colonies subject to its rule and was willing to use military might to reinforce that assertion), this whole free speech issue is grounds to cancel the Olympics.

I'm totally and completely serious. I won't watch the Bejing Olympics if they let it go on this way. The Chinese government, any government, that asserts authority over your right to free speech is worthy only of destruction. Rewarding them with a multi-billion dollar world event is beyond immoral. Pull the plug or quit having Olympiads all together.

Reschedule to another venue. Maybe a repeat venue, some other city that has already hosted an Olympics. Get on the horn with Athens, Atlanta, Barcelona, Sydney. Pick the one you want because the first one you call is going to say that yes, they'd love to have an incredible economic windfall and go down in history as the only city to host the Olympics twice in quick succession. They have the infrastructure, more or less, and I'll bet any of them would jump at the opportunity. But send a message to the Chinese public that the price of their tolerating this dictatorship is that the Olympics is not coming after all.

Then we'd see a free Tibet. And a free Bejing. It'd be the Berlin Wall coming down all over again, get a billion Chinese pissed off that their oppressive government has made them asses in front of the rest of the planet.