Friday, April 13, 2007

Fuck the Olympics

The next Olympic games are taking place in China next year. The Olympics are a country's highest p.r. coup. For three weeks everybody pretends the country in question is full of wonderful, happy, well-fed citizens and the world unites in We are the world bullshit, cue NBC bombastic music. Unless you are a five year old, there must not be a soul on Earth that actually thinks that this is about fair competition and gamesmanship and peace on fucking Earth.
In 1968, the Mexican government massacred hundreds, some say thousands, of students that were protesting the government in Mexico City a week before the Olympic games. The peaceful protests were crushed with snipers on top of buildings and plainsclothes agents in the crowd shooting at unarmed people. The games should have been suspended after that, but they weren't. Business as usual.
Next year the Olympics take place in China, a country with an appalling human rights record. It behaves horrendously towards its citizen dissidents, towards Tibet, and it is apparently in bed with the monstrously evil Sudanese government that has inflicted such horror on the poor Africans of Darfur.
Muslim Arabs killing, raping, maiming non-Arabs and not an Arab sheik doing anything to stop it.
So Mia Farrow (adopter extraordinaire) and Steven Spielberg (powerful guy in Hollywood and consultant to the Chinese) are pressuring China to rethink their support of Sudan or endure a really bad p.r. campaign right in time for the Olympics. Forget the images of hundreds of thousands of people suffering in refugee camps, the stories of inhuman evil. What works is to threaten to put a damper on the stupid Olympic games. Whatever works.
I think that countries that want to host the games should have to show a spotlessly clean human rights record (which probably means that the games could be held only in Scandinavia and Lichtenstein).
If you want the good p.r. you have to earn it. China is a joke.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous7:32 PM

    Could. Not. Agree. More.

    Signed
    (on behalf of people everywhere who really couldn't give a toss)

    Gregoryno6.

    ReplyDelete