In my many dealings with the Chinese government as a lawyer, I have heard the catchphrase “diplomatic immunity” used as a shield to avoid everything from paying for intellectual property rights to getting ordinary E&O insurance to cover an event. The Chinese Government doesn’t negotiate like we do, they bully, scream, cajole, caper, and threaten, that’s the Communist way. They are one step away from the Dark Ages and seem to steer right towards them…like this Iraqi nutjob who claims the Earth is flat. That’s the next step, right? It can’t be far after claiming Tibet as part of China.
Sally Jenkins finally says what all good-hearted, right thinking people know: the Comunist government, which promised real human rights change in exchange for the Olympics, is nothing more than the dirty-dealing, two-timing, head-banging jack-booted thug it was before we gave them the honor and money associated with the Olympics. From the article:
“The violent police action in Tibet and other events of the past two weeks make one wonder if the Chinese government is fundamentally unfit to host an Olympics. Officials there have violated the basic spirit of the event and reneged on every promise they made to the International Olympic Committee about their willingness to accommodate the world. When anyone publicly tries to hold them to account — such as our State Department, that “bad-tempered” Nancy Pelosi or the Dalai Lama — they charge critics with trying “sabotage” the Games….
To review: Officials have issued an edict forbidding live broadcasts from Tiananmen Square during the Games. This is only the latest piece of good news, to go along with the deaths in Tibet, the jailing of dissidents for merely writing on the Internet, and bulletins about food so contaminated and air so polluted they could harm the athletes.
Still another event spectators apparently can enjoy in Beijing is the 10,000-meter Surveillance Sweep. The U.S. State Department last week issued a bulletin warning that spectators should expect “on-site or remote technical monitoring at all times,” even in their hotel rooms. Furthermore, those rooms may be broken into and searched without visitors’ knowledge.
What? They can go into our hotel rooms and search them? Is this China or Venezuela? This is the conduct of a cheap, imitation Banana Republic dictator. But there’s more!
“Up to this point, the IOC has soft-pedaled these events under the rationale that “engagement” with Chinese officials is better than nothing. President Jacques Rogge defends the decision to send the Games to China, saying they are an opportunity to expose a fifth of the world’s population to the “Olympic ideal.” But it’s safe to say the Olympic ideal isn’t getting through to the Chinese people. Only the McDonald’s billboards are. On Monday, Yang Chunlin was sentenced to five years in prison for “inciting subversion.” His crime? He posted on Internet sites under the theme, “We don’t want the Olympics, we want human rights.”
The party Beijing is preparing to throw bears no resemblance to any recent Olympics: shootings, beatings, jailings, buggings, environmental crimes and paramilitary police flooding the streets? You can pretty much bet that this isn’t what Coca-Cola or the other dozen corporate sponsors had in mind when they signed up for the Olympics back in 2001.
These corporations have paid hundreds of millions of dollars for an Olympics that is turning into an international black eye….But at the moment, they appear weak-willed, un-American and complicit in Olympic abuses for the sake of a buck, thanks to the IOC’s inaction and, frankly, seeming indifference.”
Sally nailed it. China deserves these games no more than Iran or North Korea. But then again, we haven’t had a reasonably altruistic or clean Olympics since 1980. Maybe the Olympics and China deserve each other.
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