Personally, I love sailing - not a great spectator sport, but then the Brits win virtually every medal...

Favourite obscure sport must be clay pigeon shooting! If it was the winter olympics, curling must be up there too.

As for the protesting, it is inevitable that the games will be used as a political tool. Sport and politics in an ideal world shouldn't mix, but how do you play a sport in a country where humanitarian ideals, such as the right to free speech and a fair trial are not commonplace. Go back to the US Olympics and the Black Power salutes, or outside Olympics, England's cricket tour to Zimbabwe that never was.

This games should be celebrated by a country that respect the Human Rights, not in China.
BOICOT

yes i agree with cgwhite, in an ideal world politics and sport should not mix. but its quite hypocritical of OIC Olympic Bureaucracy and the Jintao Dynasty ...ooops i mean People's Republic of China;) to get up and whine
" keep politics out of sport"

when we play in our tribal...ooops i mean national colours and Chinese government is using this event to showcase its stewardship of China as a good thing.

Im also worried about how quickly the chinese government uses extreme nationalism to Its own ends. careful when riding that tiger!

sidenote - in australia there was a counter protest by chinese australians/overseas students complaining about western bias against china and pro tibetan independence activities. really
sad to see those young students get up and speak about
bias reporting in western countries and demanding no more dala lama backed violence in tibet"
they even had the stupidity to chant "no more violence in tibet"
complete tools.

For those proclaiming that Sports and politics don't mix: why is there a team called Chinese Taipei?

you're all a bunch of idiots influenced by pro-western media. in my opinion china is doing more than it should to please western countries. that is because it is in their mentality. the truth is the west is scared of china, and wants to hurt them now when they are actually opening to the world

Hehe..alamothe, you are getting my vote!!

Alamothe, I refute that totally. Economically China is certainly one of the biggest, if not the biggest power, militarily it is such too. And I ask you three questions, why are the Tibetan monks protesting at all? What is that ship near Southern Africa loaded with supplies doing? And why haven't good arguments been made, rather than claiming propaganda in the Western Press, one of the many things that the Chinese government is famed for?

I am really not sure what I think on the Tibet issue. I don't think I know enough about it to come to a judgement.
As a Brit (I live in England) I have heard lots through my life about the troubles in northern Ireland. However, I personally know only one person from there who is against being a member of the UK, whilst I know many who are for it. Thus I would really like to know what the view of the Tibetan people is before I come to judgement. Does anyone have this information for me?
I do know that china has a very suspicious record on propaganda and free speech, with several events that make the government look bad almost struck from history.
Arms: Who supplied weapons to Afghani rebels in the past?The West. Back then they were fighting the Soviets, and it was good to prop up a resistance. Now, I guess you could argue that in supplying Mugabe china is propping up an anti-western resistance, but the point I wanted to make is that most nations have sold arms to those who are not friends of their friends.
Military Strength: I don't think china is the greatest military strength, by any measure. I don't disagree that it is likely to become one in the future, but it has not yet.
----
I know we have lots of members from Hong Kong, but I believe we have some from 'main' china. what are your views on this?
Also, a question of my own: is Hong Kong still as separate as it was in the first few years after the handover, when it was kept almost sealed from the rest of china?

China don´t deserve an Olimpic Games

People who say the games in China shouldn't be politicized forget that it is the Chinese government who wishes to use the games as a political tool. They want the games to be a showcase to counter (mis?)perceptions in other countries that China is dirty, polluted, corrupt, and filled with starving peasants deluded by political propaganda and oppressed minorities. They want to show that China is a "team player" in international relations and draw attention away from their support for the governments of DPRK, Myanmar, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. They want people to sea Tienanmen Square full of flag-waving Chinese patriots instead of protestors. They want it in the capital so they can keep their eyes on everything that happens.

no, they just want to host the best games so far and they've put a lot of effort into it. even you are welcome!! the chinese have more concern for the rest of the world than usa would ever have

"Politics should be kept out of the Olympics" I agree, China never should have been awarded the games under the pretence of improving human rights.

>For those proclaiming that Sports and politics don't mix: why is there a team called Chinese Taipei?

Because Taipei is part of China. Just like HongKong, Macao. There is no better name so far.

>And I ask you three questions, why are the Tibetan monks protesting at all?

Most of people in Tibet are not like the monkes. They are only the tools being used and manipulated by by some well known anti-China gornvenments. They don't want to see a fast-growing Country under a different social system which obviously considered as a much worse one than theirs.

btw, when a small number of monkes in Tibet are protesting, you ask why? When people all over China, Iraq, Afghanistan..are protesting, you ask what?

>What is that ship near Southern Africa loaded with supplies doing?

They are doing what all the other govenments would do under the same situation.

>And why haven't good arguments been made, rather than claiming propaganda in the Western Press, one of the many things that the Chinese government is famed for?

Good argument will not appear in your media for sure. :-)
Media always serves for politics, I thought you must know it. If you don't like something, how can there be good argument about it?

>I do know that china has a very suspicious record on propaganda and free speech.

Free speech? Can a communist make anti-USA govenment public speech before the White House? There is no real free speech in the world, as long as there is government and politics. ---- You can make your free speech, but you do not want to make the rulers feel threatened. They get unhappy and your ass gets kicked. Take it and it's not hard to understand.


I don't believe Beijing Olympic will be totally without politics. There is no Olympic without politics. I believe the Chinese government would like to show the good aspects of China to the whole world. Yes, China is far from perfect and she has many problems, some of which are very serious. But China is improving and getting better day by day.

If you really want to know the truth, come to China and see and judge with YOUR OWN eyes. Maybe you will find things are not that bad as you may thought.

I believe USA will be 1st and Russia and China would likely fight for the 2nd place.

Well, as a Chinese-Canadian, I support the Olympic Games in China... but I really don't think politics should be apart of it. I am not very opinionated concerning the Tibet question, although I know that the very mention of it gets the blood of most ethnic Chinese people boiling.

China's human rights record is not very good... but neither was any western countries' before the industrial revolution, which is essentially the same revolution that China is currently undergoing. Expect that higher productivity, higher wages, and pressure from the international communty will eventually lead to a much better human rights record, in much the same way it did for the rest of the developed world.

In the end, will boycotting the Olympics actually convince the Chinese government it needs to leave Tibet? Or will it only alienate and embitter the government and it's fiercely nationalistic people? Would you force China into another cultural genocide and period of isolationism? Why not just put aside differences in values, and come together for a great sporting event...

well i have lived in china for a year and i have been to tibet and i can yes the Chinese are lovely people, their government is corrupt at lower levels and Tibetans of all sorts not just monks desire independence and freedom from"reeducation" camps.
wamlam do you truly believe that if they had a free vote in tibet that the majority would freely choose to stay within china? the impression i got was overwhelming support for the independence and a deep love of the dalai lama.

BOICOT!!

I like Rowing, Shooting, Archery, Judo, and Gymnastics the best. Though gymnastics is annoying since it is based on subjective judges. What I love the most though is Pentathlon. It's just so epic lol. And I hope USA wins everything like usual. Hahaha. But it would cool to see like American Samoa or Iraq take home some medals.

OK. Tibet was full of Helots ruled by slave owners. In the mid 20th, the Chinese Revolution Army deprived the ownership of the lands from the slave owners and the Chinese government forced slave owners to give their lands to local peasants. They lost their lands, lost their power and they lost their social status..they lost everyting as slave owners. And a certain part of the lama in Tibet are the offspring of the former slave owners. So they hated Chinese government a lot.

Besides, for history reasons, people in Tibet love lama mainly because being a lama is a great glory for them, they consider lama as a very nobel and holy messager of the Buddha, just like a priest in Vatican. So most of the people in Tibet respect lama very much.
Since Most of the Tibet people believe in Buddha, but China is not a religionary country like Palestine or Vatican, so the Chinese government does not encourage people believe Buddha. That's another reason I believe for them to be departed from China. After all, people with different belief always tends to have conflics.

But Tibet is part of China, this is the truth. The Chinese government does not want to see the independence of Tibet for sure, just like USA does not want to see Alaska or Hawaii get independent.

Things are complicated than you thought. There are very many reasons behind the problem. I'm not an expert on Tibet issue. But as a Chinese, I do not want to see any part of China being seperated away from China.

We can hardly reach a common agreement for we stand in differnt shoes.
But "One World, One Dream." belongs to all human beings.

Good luck Beijing, good luck Olympics!

I love playing basketball a lot!! USA dream team is wonderful and amazing.

Houston Rockets and Utah Jazz will start their second match in about two hours. Go Rockets!!
:-)

YES!

Had the people of Taiwan wanted reunification with mainland China, then a pro-unification party would have won their most recent election. If you want to force a government onto a people without their consent, well, there's a word for that: tyranny.

As for communist protestors in front of the White House, wawlam, I can tell you've never actually been there. I was in DC two weeks ago, and a bunch of people were protesting the War on the closed road in front of it. They had signs saying, "George Bush is the real terrorist" with a picture of him in a Saudi headdress, along with placards accusing various cabinet secretaries of rather heinous crimes. Any of these people (or myself, for that matter) could have spit on the columns of the White House façade. I must surmise that you are Chinese, that you suppose from your own country's lack of real freedoms that it is the same case elsewhere. That is not so, and it saddens me to think you may never breathe in your lifetime even a gasp of the air of freedom.

Well, American-brand air of freedom anyways...

The funniest thing (not to make light of it) about the whole Tibet question, is that the Chinese government has actually placed restrictions on certain religious miracles... Supernatural bans! They've banned reincarnation without state approval! Haha! I love that, and it's amazing that it has such huge political ramifications when the current Dalai Lama dies.

Well menace, to make a completely unfair comparison to your definition of tyranny... Tell that to the American Civil War Union leaders...

... and the black people they freed from slavery? Okay, I'll do that.

I knew you would say that... and the mainland Chinese are just as convinced they're right. Just as the Confederates were convinced that the Union was wrong. =)

The difference is, there are no slaves to be freed in Taiwan, and Taiwan did not start armed hostilities (even though Southerners like to call it "The War of Northern Agression", the Civil War started with Confederate militia attacked a U.S. fort). The closer to analogy is between the Federal Government and the Japanese Empire, who sought to bring freedom and democracy to socio-economically backward states by invading them, killing their young men, and razing their cities.

But do you really think that the Civil War was started to free the slaves? That might have been the overt pretext, and certainly the one that goes into most textbooks...

I did say that this was an unfair comparison. I don't actually believe what I'm saying...

The Civil War was fought over slavery in the same sense that the World Wars were battles against tyranny. That is, it has become fashionable to discuss the causes of the Civil War in terms of differing social structure, differing economies, differing culture, but all of those factors originate in the practice of slavery in the South (people always bring up the slave-holding border states, but their agricultural economies were much smaller scale than those of the other southern states, and consequently they derived much less utility from slave-holding). Likewise, at no point did the allies every say, "Hey, we need to bring democracy (back) to these countries;" but the military aggression of their enemies would not have come had they been or remained democratic.

to answer fidglesquidge's question way earlier, I know there are some serious Free Speech issues going on in China. My cousin is a china-buff and is a pen-pal with a chinese citizen. She tells me that it's not so good over there.

"As for communist protestors in front of the White House, wawlam, I can tell you've never actually been there." Menace is right, my history teacher just came back from a trip to Washington DC. He told me about this same sort of thing.