"Mullen The" ???

The choice of China as host nation this time around was silly and wrong on all sorts of fronts. Human rights in general, the pollution etc etc. I'm likely not watching much of it anyway, mainly because I'm just not a team playertype, but now I have an excuse that most people won't just roll their eyes at.

The IOC is in a real bind on this one and it looks good on them. What the hell else were they expecting? And you're right, the sentiment behind the protest is anti-totalitarian, nothing more or less. And finally, why is noted Canadian Olympico Dick Pound silent on this? He doesn't mind wagging his finger at 'roid monsters in professional sports, but he gives a pass to oppressive regimes and their propaganda? Shame.

Good for you. I too will be boycotting, even if my government isn't.

Dalailama is such a messer~~ Olympic game is just a feast, people who like it, join it, if someone has other problems, solve it at other time, don't ruin the people who want to enjoy.

I really don't understand how Dalailama define "human right". As I know, before 1950's, Tibet is under controled by Dalailama as slavery, innocent people's life were raped and sacrificed to their bloody "religion". Even Dalailama is exiled now, he and his followers are still trying to destroy the Tibet society, as it happened in March, the Dalai clique burnt innocent citizen's house, 20-year-old girl was burnt alive! hooooo~ horrible! I can't imagine what will happen if offer these crazy people the "human right" they want, that is not gonna happen! because Dalailama and his followers all over the world are MURDERERS!

I am not any government's guard, but let's open our own eyes before we use the term such as "human right" or "government crackdown" when talking about china's issue, as we know, china is a very complex country, multi-culture, multi-religion, multi-ethnics... oh, besides, they have billions of population, there is no second such complex country in this world any more, Frankly speaking, china's government has already done the best to balance the benefits to all the people with different interests, what they have done is the best choice, we can't be too judgmental. Maybe it is not as perfect as in ideal world, but when I traveled to Lhasa, what i saw is a prosperous city, i can't ignore china government's contributions to tibet, those schools and hospitals, those luxury hotels and plateau railways...I was impressed by how rich the citizens and Lama's were.

I really can't see why Dalailama keep claiming that china's goverment holocaust 12 million Tibetans during 1950's, which actually by then, the total population of tibetan was only 3million~~ it's really doubtable, isn't it?! Well, anyway, as an exiled "leader", Dalailama has to lie sometime, otherwise how to keep his pathetic followers!

Shame on Free Tibet fighters!

I wonder how many of the protesters have spent time in China? Do they have a clue as to what they are doing or are they just people with too much time on their hands? How many have taken the time to consider China's side of the story? If it were you, how would you react to the protests? Though I've not seen it written I suspect one of the reasons China was awarded the Olympics was because of the progress that has been made on human rights since 1989 and by rewarding that they encourage more progress. Most people's posture when attacked is to be defensive. These protesters are delaying China's progress towards Western standards. Yes the communist party wants to stay in control and that's why they've been loosening up slowly. The bottom line is the people of China enjoy many more freedoms and higher lifestyles than ever before. With over a billion people to manage expecting China to change overnight is naive. If you really want to help accelerate the change then support them, go to the Olympics, buy some merchandise. Then you can say you've done your part towards promoting world peace.

Awesome Al, you got some of those government stooges dropping by your site that everyone is talking about.

And all I said was I was staying in my basement! Note to stooges of totalitarianism:<blockquote class="smalltext">Are these anti-Chinese protests?<br>Maybe they are anti-Chinese Communist party protests.<br>More likely they are anti-IOC protests based on its embrace of the Chinese Communist party.<br>For me, they are anti-Rogge protests.</blockquote>It's like a five line haiku! If you are going to sloganeer around here make sure is it anti-Rogge. And ask yourself what Norman Bethune would think.

Well, I'm just happy that _someone's_ making money from blogging!

For the record, when I said human rights, I was talking about in China, not Tibet. It is well known among circles who actually bother to look into it that the country of Tibet under the rule of the theocratic regime run by the DaliLama and his followers was teribly nasty and opressive.

Personally, I am not a fan of the Olympics, simply because the country with the most money can attract the best sports people to move there, give them citizenship and then send them off to the games as a representative of said nation. Sounds like a mercenary army of atheletes to me that do not really represent that countries best. However, giving the games to China was just cowtowing (how DO you spell that) to the corrupt leadership of that nation.

"kowtow"

Ha - read the comments here. And we'll give Google a few more days to catch up and I bet we'll see more.

I love that article:

"And while insular Americans might not understand this, the World Cup of soccer has become much more important to many more people in the world. "

Truer than true.

I hear the Dalai Lama likes to kick puppies, too.

Kick them _and then eat them_.

To be fair, puppies are pretty tough; you *have* to tenderize them before you eat them. Is "Cici" a real person or an agent of the Chinese government? It seems if a blog mentions this PRC IOC issue, someone with a second-language command of English slams the Dolly Llama. Weird.