In a couple of places today, I heard about folks protesting the running of the torch for the Olympics as a way of protesting China and its actions. There was also some talk about boycotting the Olympics to protest China’s treatment of Tibet.
As a matter of principle (based upon admittedly limited knowledge of the situation), I suppose I’m against Chinese occupation of Tibet. But, in my mind, this has a very tenuous relationship to the Olympics. China hasn’t changed much from when we started trading heavily with them; and hasn’t changed much from when the Olympic committee decided to hold an Olympics there. It’s not like anyone woke up in the past couple of months and discovered, “OH MY GOD! China commits human rights abuses! Did *you* know about this?” So, trying to punish abuses with a boycott of the opening ceremonies or the games generally doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
Oh, and interesting tidbit: The running of the torch from Greece to the host stadium was initially done for a Leni Riefenstahl propaganda film promoting the 1936 Olympic games in Germany. A much less interesting tidbit: when I was 5 and my Grandma and Grandpa were telling me about the torch coming from Greece, I asked them why they didn’t just use Greek matches.
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