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The linked rings on every Chinese Coke bottle and the leaping athletes on each McDonald’s paper bag testify to the power the world’s biggest corporations believe this summer’s Olympics wields. But having spent huge sums, the companies sponsoring the Beijing games are about to find themselves the targets of a new, more vigorous war on China’s human rights record by campaigners boosted by the success of protests along the torch relay route. Yesterday a coalition of Tibetan groups warned Coca-Cola that it would be “complicit in a humanitarian disaster” unless it used its influence to ensure Tibet was dropped from the torch route. And tomorrow, Dream for Darfur will launch a critical “report card” on sponsors of the games.
Campaigners are urging companies to press the International Olympic Committee and Beijing itself for change – or risk damaging their brands. “Companies [who do not act] will get physical protests; they will get letters; we will ask people to turn off their adverts,” said Ellen Freudenheim, director of corporate outreach at Dream for Darfur, which argues that they should press China to put pressure on Sudan as its major oil buyer. “Sponsors don’t make policy and we understand that. But combined they have about the equivalent of the GDP of Canada, the world’s eighth largest economy; they have government affairs offices; they have lobbying firms; they have international presences – and they all do engage in politics.”.
I think its going to be a long hot summer for China.
When few years ago it was agreed to hold 2008 olympics in China, the political situation there was much worse than it is today, and no one had complained back then, so what gives?
China is more free, open, and less communist “regime” today than it was few years ago. Of course it is not as “free” and “open” as USA is, but nevertheless it *is* more than it was before.
Where were all those protesters back when 2008 olympic games were granted to China?
Yawn…
#1–888==maybe people took some time to think about it rather than perform in knee jerk fashion as would be characterized by their critics?
“Timing” is the analysis of people with nothing to contribute. Stop watching network news.
#3
So where were you back then?
Olympic games are for SPORT, not politics.
I pity the moron “do-gooders” like you who can’t distinguish sport from politics, and need years “time to think about it”.
I support Tibet, but Olympic Games is about … games, not about Tibet.
Mixing Tibet political issues with Olympic Games in China is as bad as it was in 1980 and 1984 olumpics.
Moreover, applying politics onto sport events is a kind political terrorism, IMHO no different than i.e. Al Qaeda bombing WTC in 2001 and killing innocent people because they don’t like US Govt’s foreign policy – it had as much to do with one another as this, and is equally stupid.
#1 http://moourl.com/bcrnz
That would be the Google News search results for 2001 on “China Olympics Protest” that took me 20 seconds to perform (I’m slow).
“…and no one had complained back then…”
“Where were all those protesters back when 2008 olympic games were granted to China?”
There were protests. Now the games approach, the torch is run, monks get beaten and jailed, and the media pays attention. And so the protests multiply.
#4 Olympics are very political.
In all fairness, if they were held in Tokyo…I would protest against just as much as China.
– overcrowding? Yep
– pollution? Yep
– one does child labor, the other hunts whales and puts an English “RESEARCH” on the boat.
Not to mention dolphins.
#4–so where was I? I think trying to attack me in a total vacuum of what my positions might be on the elements of your post is actually worse than having nothing to contribute.
Kinda stupid actually.
#6
No country in the world is perfect.
You’ve got to draw the line somewhere, or all you can do all your life is only protesting against [whatever is wrong somewhere].
I think I’ll start a protest movement against all protest, I’m really sick and tired of it.
Mark Derail, if you are american why don’t you start protesting first about issues that are related to your own country? (or city or school or whatever is the most important to you)
Get those issues in your on area solved first, then worry about issues somewhere else. Step by step.
Otherwise your protests are meaningless news on tv, thats all.
#7
You have proven countless times on this board alone you *are* stupid. Nihil novi, dude.
#6 You’re right. As a Canadian, I’ll start.
– We’re raping Alberta oil sands contaminating the water table for hundreds of square miles.
– We kill baby seals – because they aren’t any natural predators anymore in those regions.
– We torch police cars when our home team wins a NFL playoff.
– We prevent the Amerindians to sell cigarettes & gasoline at lower prices to non-Amerindians.
Darn, it’s hard finding negative stuff.
However, we do allow many immigrants from all walks of life and countries here, for a better life.
Oh yeah…we pay more taxes than any American. However you won’t find many unhappy Canadians over that issue.
China’s human rights record was well known at the time of the selection process. The IOC selected China based on the promise that they would clean up their human rights record and their environment. As with most promises Chinese, these were never intended to be met.
“People soon began to ask how the Olympic movement could choose as its host a one-party state which every year executes more people than the rest of the world combined. The answer was unequivocal. ‘We are convinced that the Olympic Games will improve the human rights record [of China],’ said Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) President. This August he will be hoping his words do not come back to haunt him.”…
“he adds. ‘To date, the initial promise … has been rather badly betrayed.'”…”when it comes to executions the statistics that we are able to get out of China still make grim reading–an estimated 8,000 executions every year, or 22 people killed each day”
http://tinyurl.com/5939f7
A very good read.
Chinese culture and business is incomprehensively short-sighted. To the Chinese way of thinking, once they have their “bird in the hand”, they can do anything they want. They can lie, cheat and steal to get that “bird” without any thought for the consequences.
So they lied, cheated, and stole the Olympics to show the world how modern and good they are, and then broke the promises that were inconvenient to fulfill.
This is “Business as usual” to the Chinese.
#11
good read indeed.
‘May I go now?’ asks the reporter.
‘No. Come with us,’ the officer replies.
‘What for?’
‘To clear up this matter.’
But that’s what was to be expected.
I never knew IOC is run by bunch of fools if they really believed there would be any freedom of information or movement in a *COMMUNIST* country (for crying out loud, is there – or was there – any single communist country in the world EVER that had both reedom of info and freedom of movement?!)
#11–Ah Yea==that was a “nice” read. But why so critical of the Chinese being “short sighted?” If you have the means and the will to suppress your people, there is nothing short sighted at all in their policies. Just a different philosophy. You act like Tiananmen Square never happened?
I can see China crushing Tibetan protests, jailing international correspondents, making no curbs on pollution, arming the Janjaweed in Darfur, and continued poisoning of food and play items, and they would still be given the Olympics in 2028–unless they wanted it sooner?
How is that short sighted?
#12 True…and I wasn’t being sarcastic.
The stuff you bring up, doesn’t keep me up at night. Nothing is perfect.
Interesting wake-up call – I’ll go back on posting how Americans now have to submit their laptops to a full search. Neat!
#15
Your own canadian police shooting at Indian protesters “doesn’t keep you all night” but chinese police shooting at Tibetan protesters does?
You’re full of shit 🙂
#16 LOL, man that made me chuckle.
FWIW, many of those Indians are better equipped than our RCMP.
An incident many years ago, the Indians fired first.
However, isn’t the killing ratio, in your example, 100-to-1? Or 100-to-zero?
#17 Don’t take it out of context.
Of course killing ratio is difefrent, but I said it in lieu of you having good sleep at night when it comes to matters of your rotting canadian state, while you apparently can’t sleep at night because half the world away rotten chinese state is misbehaving 🙂
Actually FWIW I found it very common when dealing with Canadians: most of them, like you, are very interested in anything anywhere in the world and commonly sees USA as the “devil”, while almost none of them knows the shit that happens in your own backyard. Sad.
Your own governments every year were giving the chinese communist government (among other “undeveloped countries”) a 2 billion dollar grant until LAST YEAR (or year befor – I don’t remember now from what year was the article I read about it).
If you pay taxes in Canada, you are as much partially guilty of the massacre in Tibet.
Start worry about your own country first, perhaps if more people do the same worldwide *something8 really can be accomplished.
Otherwise your “protests” are meaningless beating around the bush, as usual.
#17 also, if you really want to go by ratios or by statistical percentages, proportionally with Canada having only 30+mil people, while China having billion of people, the single indian killed by canadian police is MUCH HIGHER percentage of death than 100 tibetans killed by chinese police.
😉
#14 LOL!!! How could I have been so wrong?
888 Grrr, now I Have to find toothpicks to prop my eyelids.
Anything bad to say about Taiwan? I like their food.
#21
LOL Mark Derail
No country is perfect, certainly Taiwan isn’t either… just google it up 😀
Sorry ’bout the toothpicks 😉
Still don’t see any of this whining as different from any other populist current infecting the U.S. in the past – including the racist component. Only 1910 bigots actually mentioned the “Yellow Peril”.
Boycott whoever you wish. Stop buying any products with Chinese components or made in China. Or Taiwan. Or Japan. Or Mexico.
Pretty soon you’ll be down to the purity of your bodily fluids and not dealing in trade or politics with most other nations on Earth. Kind of like the way most religious zealots would rather have it.
#9 – 888 – You [bobbo] have proven countless times on this board alone you *are* stupid. Nihil novi, dude.
That statement proves that you’re full of shit.
#11 – Ah_Yea – Chinese culture and business is incomprehensively short-sighted. To the Chinese way of thinking, once they have their “bird in the hand”, they can do anything they want. They can lie, cheat and steal to get that “bird” without any thought for the consequences.
I wouldn’t say short-sighted, but deceitful.
#19 – 888 – while China having billion of people, the single indian killed by canadian police is MUCH HIGHER percentage of death than 100 tibetans killed by chinese police.
So, you mean that a human is less worth just because he/she happen to live in a country with a population of more than 1.3B?
#24
Wanna pick on something, don’t ya? 😉
I read Dvorak’s blog since begining.
“bobbo” proved countless times his idiocy, that I won’t even bother to reply.
You might disagree with my opinion, of course.
Quoting out of context won’t get you far.
Twisting meaning of the quoted out-of-context text won’t prove anything either (but it is showing that actually you are full of shit LOL).
#25—888===well, for one, I agree totally with Jägermeister’s assessment. To that end, only an idiot would read Dvorak’s blog since the beginning, whatever that might mean. And only an idiot would read everything that some other idiot has posted. For example–I have only read every third word of 23% of your posts that I have come across, but I only went back as far as when you were posting as 824.
Mecca Time will reveal all truths.
#26 – subtle, insightful, complex. It’s all going to go over someone’s head.
#14, Bobbo. I read this reply as a clever double entendre and replied in like kind.
Just in case I was wrong, here is the answer.
“Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.”
And,
“Can a Tiger change it’s stripes?”
According to the scuttle-butt I’ve been hearing, the international community is figuring out real quick that they are being played by China, and the people I know don’t like being the fool, so they are now looking for other, friendlier places to do business.
Favorite among the new business destinations are those countries which benefited from the British legal system during the time of the British Empire.
China is burning bridges faster than they can build them. It has become clear that China would rather see your business burn to the ground than for them to loose face.
And it’s going to cost them in the long run.
A good solution for the Olympic/Tibet issue would be for China to give Tibet a sorta ‘temporary autonomy’, at least enough that they can compete in the Olympic games. Then, they could make a deal: if Tibet can win, say, three medals at the Olympic, Tibet will gain full independence from China. If they cannot, then they have to remain part of a China without complaint.
This would not only help appease the protesters, it will also make the Olympics much more interesting! Think of how much bloodshed could have been avoided if the UK did the same thing with Northern Ireland (it could have been split into two countries: catholic N. Ireland and protestant N. Ireland, and who ever won would have been the ruling denomination). If it works well, we could try the same thing for the Basque regions, Brittony, Cornwall, Quebec, Scotland, Texas, eastern and western Canada, and anyone else who wants independence…. 😀
-Ben (who really should be working for the UN)
PS: Has there ever been a New England separatist party? I think New England would make a nice country. Ben and Jerry’s could be a national dish….
#27–Moss==I think he’s thinking, if only because he hasn’t responded? -or- he could just be so totally pissed at my stupidity that he is not honoring my gentle admonishment? We’ll only be able to tell from his posts on other threads. But, thanks. I do think I too often speak too singularly, so 888’s rebuke was considered.
#28–Ah Yea==when I’m feeling good, I think I can follow “clever” but almost without exception a double entendre within a clever is way beyond me. I’m a simple man. I watch China go its own way for 7000 years and get criticized for being short sighted. Way beyond me. If short is less than 3 fingers, THAT I could understand. But what size penis does China have?
#29–Uncle Ben==normally I’d leave you alone, but I’m on a roll and sipping my last bottle of medicine before hitting the sack. To that end, any idea what size penis China has? Your post seems somewhat tangential to that issue, which is pretty darn close.
Failing that====you are noticing that there seems to be competing forces in the world. One is as you have mentioned for people wanting to form a country with as homogenous and small a group as possible==as with the FLDS in Texas, and Tibet in China. Then there are folks who wish to stride the world stage like USA and China who want to amalgamate any difference to form a greater union. So, there is tension with Vatican City on one end and One World Government on the other. Whether thru nuclear threats, Olympic Games, or lack of interest, which way do you think it will trend?
I hear (rumor only) that it’s pretty small. Maybe their overcompensating for some other “inadequacy”?