China Is Getting Ready
March 24, 2008
More on China and the 2008 Summer Olympics from Amnesty International.
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48 Responses to “China Is Getting Ready”
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The irony of China hosting and what the Olympics stand for is almost too ironic for my tiny brain to take.
If you’re talking about peace and brotherhood, Aaron, than wrap your tiny brain around the fact that any nation state’s hosting of the Olympics is rich in irony, with side helpings of hypocrisy.
The irony of the US having hosted the Olympics and what the Olympics stood for is almost too ironic for my tiny brain to take.
If China is a bad guy, then U.S. is satan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism
U.S. is evil, but China is even more so - it treats it’s own people as slaves. I wish the Chinese people would fire their evil govt.
The last time I watched the Olympics, little Kerri Strug made that landing on her busted leg. I think that I’ll probably keep it that way. I won’t be tuning in to watch the China Olympic Games.
haven’t watched the Olympics since the triplecast in 1988.
will continue not-watching the Olympics. to hell with the Chinese government.
Folks, the Olympic Games organization is a multinational corporation. They are not accountable to the UN or to any non-profit organization.
Blame can go to anyone.
China can be blamed for autracity in Tibet, USA can be blamed for the holocaust that is now Iraq, France can be blamed for setting up Africa as a powder-keg that goes off daily.
freethought - You’re a moron! There is no comparison to ANYTHING going on in the US to the opressive government of China or Cuba. Pull your head out, just a little bit, and see some light. Your comments are just plain ridiculous.
Funny how many people think USA is scum of the earth. i’m writing this sitting in China’s neighborhood, and can say for sure that I’ll take USA, under Bush any day than these jokers,
China abuses its own people; the USA abuses everyone else’s people. Which is worse?
By spreading images like this, you are not doing nobody a service.
BTW, who’s the actor in the poster? Seems like a hot Hong Kong movie.
While I do not in the least condone U.S. international action of late, to remotely compare it to China’s long legacy of forceful oppression of its own people and others is completely ridiculous and ignorant. Do your homework, asshole.
Try sitting in a neighborhood in Falluja.
What is lost on you morons is that while China oppresses its own the US oppresses others outside its borders. Of course, there are Americans oppressed by the US government as well.
“There is no comparison to ANYTHING going on in the US to the opressive[sic] government of China or Cuba.”
Ahh… how about our continued slaughter of Iraqis? How about any one of the invasions/interventions/attacks that our USA has carried out on people all over the world? We kill a few tens of thousands of Iraqis and that isn’t far worse than anything China is doing? Oh wait… that isn’t happening IN the USA so that makes it OK.
Seriously… China is responsible for a hell of a lot less death and destruction than the USA. How can you not see this? Sure the US has much good about it but guess what? So does China. If you want to wag your finger at China for doing evil you better be prepared to man up to the mounds of evil the good ol’ USA has brought to the world.
Peter said it best.
Not to defend the USA, but you’d have to have a very different set of facts to be comparing USA’s transgressions with China’s.
Given its resources, and its founding on principles of freedom, liberty and democracy, we are less forgiving of the USA for its errors.
But to compare it with legitimately hostile nations is taking the anti-establishment rhetoric a little too far.
I think that Amnesty International would be the last group to disagree with you, Chris.
What most of the world doesn’t realize is that not all Americans agree with their govt nor do we stand behind it. Just because I live in the US doesn’t make me evil because of the actions of our war mongering president. I’m tired of people shitting on every American as if we were the ones physically fighting in other countries. Our servicemen and women do NOT ask to go to Iraq or any other country. They DID however sign up to be in the military so thats kind of what they get. Our military doesn’t “protect” us so much as it “Proactively eliminates possible threats”. This means that our president THINKS someone is being bad overseas, therefore we must bomb them and just shout ‘fighting terrorism’ at any objections that are raised.
While I do NOT condone the actions of our govt I still have to live in this country. I haven’t read too much into the whole tibet thing because quite frankly it’s NONE OF MY DAMN BUSINESS!!!!! My god why can’t the US stay the hell out of others business’s and focus on our own country for once. I’m of course talking about a ‘working’ healthcare system, homeless, social security, and just general all around housekeeping. We do more and spend more money meddling with other countries affairs than we do our own. I know a cool way to help with the whole gun control thing and it’s a pretty easy fix. STOP FRIGGEN MAKING THEM! There are more than enough guns in existence right now for every man women and child to have at least 1(possibly exaggerating, but probably true). We don’t need that many…really we don’t.
Some of you NRA nazi’s may take offense to this but a lot of us americans are NOT gun toting cowboys who think everyone should be entitled to own or carry a firearm. Sorry, thats just the way it is. I’m getting off topic a bit but I just want to say, in conclusion, that I for one have never watched the olympics nor do I care about them. Seriously hurling is an olympic sport?!? WTF! The olympics just aren’t what the used to be and they never will be the same ever again. It’s all too commercialized, like many things have become, and to actually support the events they hold is a crime against humanity. They may still have them but the olympics should consist of REAL athletes that compete in events like: javelin throw, track and field, swimming, skiing, archery, and other such games/events that actually require an athlete. Remember where the olympics originated and honor what the olympics signified and I may just watch again.
these pictures are just photoshopped to distort the public’s view on china……
I love how anything on the internet criticizing any country inevitably turns into a clusterfuck ab0ut why the US sucks and precisely how much it sucks. Really productive discussion going on right here.
Sigh
The world is making me sad
Peter did not say it best. Rather, what he said was typical.
“China’s long legacy of forceful oppression of its own people and others…” Really? Ask a Chinese person about this. Ask them if they feel oppressed or that they have lived under a long legacy of forceful oppression. The answer will, almost certainly, not jibe with what you expect.
China is not a “legitimately hostile nation”. Certainly less so than the USA. Who has China invaded and how does that compare to the US’s legacy of invasion? Whose people has China gone and slaughtered? Sure you can go back in history and find atrocities. You can do this with any country. But the worst that anyone can say about China in the past quarter century will be nothing near the worst you can say about the USA over that same period.
@freethought:
yeah, the US is soooo terrible. that’s why every day people risk their lives trying to get IN the US.
Whoever compares USA to China is ignorant and spoiled. I lived my whole youth in a communist country and immigrated to the USA later in life. The quality of life and freedom of speech are uncomparable here !
Back in my country, we had to stand in line for food. Toilet paper was a luxury. If you dared to criticize the government, you would have people knocking at your door and you may end up ‘missing.’ Meat was a luxury and only bribing may get you some. Your life consisted of standing in lines for everything from food to shoes to toothpaste.
Bribery was a way of life, and you could never work hard and purchase a home or a car, you had to be a scum to get ahead.
There is just no comparison. The self-righteous people who never had to live in a communist regime should go and live in a country where even ones right to have children is compromised.
@26: People just follow the flow of wealth & resources, which through warfare and theft has been channeled to go where it goes.
I don’t know what country you lived in “live_free”. I was born in China and moved to the U.S. The conditions in China have improved a lot in the past 10 years, considering it was a 3rd world country just a decade ago, and none of my relatives feel “oppressed” at all. Nobody I know, and nobody in my family has had to stand in line for food or anything because since about 30 years ago China has had a capitalism-based economy.
Mao is respected for being a good general and keeping China from imperialist Western influences. In regards to his capabilities as a government leader, I hear Chinese people talk crap about him ALL THE TIME, IN CHINA, whenever I am visiting. Most common phrase? “It’s good he died, otherwise we would have been held even further back”.
The U.S. has a long history of removing democracies to install dictators in their favor–see Panama, Iran, etc, so don’t give me that crap about spreading democracy and freedom. Currently, its economy is superior to that of China and its citizens are better off, which is why I am here, but no superpower is some moral bastion.
I believe that China needs to improve its human rights record, absolutely. But please, when you criticize China (and you have a right to criticize whether you live in Sweden, the U.S., or North Korea), at least keep the facts correct and don’t believe all the B.S. Keep in mind that China has 1.3 BILLION people, 4x more than the U.S. in the same land area, and that just because a system works here doesn’t mean it will work there.
I have a lot of hope for China… while it’s not democratic and human rights are a problem, it’s still not a developed nation. They’re developing and the middle-class is growing. The gov’t is rightful tenuous about pushing people around, and reform is coming from all quarters.
When I lived there, people were pretty happy… they have a culture of hard work and dilligence, and they were always optimistic for their children’s future.
This is getting a little silly. You are all comparing rotten apples to rotten oranges and arguing which one is more rotten. As live_free and others have pointed out, China is oppressive to its citizens, though a lot less so now than in the past. However, with all due respect, China has not been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands (some estimates over a million) of innocent people or for installing regimes all over the world in their own self-interest at the expense of the freedoms of citizens of those countries.
The Chinese government is bad to its own people but mostly benign to the rest of the world (save for Tibet who it says are “its own people”). The U.S. government is mostly benign to its own people, though quickly subverting their citizen’s rights, but a force of evil to the rest of the world.
They do have several evils in common: torture (China against its citizens, the U.S. against everyone else’s) and denial of their human rights abuses.
Frankly, I don’t care which is worse. They’re both bad. The one thing I’ll say, though, is that China is improving and the U.S. is getting worse, so if China is worse by some measure then it might not be long before the U.S. catches up.
I’ve been working in China for the past two years. I’ve also worked with many of the Olympic organizing groups for the past three years. My comments on this ad:
1) It’s sad, but true, China is fantastically efficient at controlling dissent.
2) It’s sad, but true, the Olympics have become a front for the sponsors to wine & dine prospective clients. The entire thing is a money-making sham.
I have been to China and have seen how the guards patrol the country. I am from the US and seen how it is out there, they are oppressed cannot speak freely, everything they do is closely monitored. The citizens are running schemes to pay for their food, some work a lot harder than any American that their faces are so beaten down that it just makes you feel bad that you cannot help them.
Be happy you live in America, there aren’t police that kidnap you because you do not fit in.
This poster is showing what may happen to those that from the past, present and future to those that disobey China. Be happy you live in the US and you have the right to free speech because if you didn’t you wouldn’t be able to right here.
China’s history is rich in peasant rebellion. At the rate the government is going, I expect the people to rise up and take change into their own hands.
The world will be a better place if everyone (or every country) just minds their own business. Helping is nice, but “helping” without being asked to is INVASION. China does have its own problem, let China deal with it. Trash talking about China simply won’t make what US did in Iraq right.
You guys are crazy. There was an online poll a while ago asking the Chinese if they would want to be a Chinese again in the next life. A large chunk of people voted no before the Chinese gov’t took it down. However “oppressive” you think the US might be, it’s nowhere as brutal to its own people as the Chinese are. That’s part of the reason they would get out of the country the first chance they could.
If America had 20% of the worlds population I bet we would be screwing over a bunch of them with no healthcare and poor working conditions too.
America has lost most of it’s credibility as a moral authority after bombing the shit out of Vietnam and Iraq for no good reason. Both “wars” that the people didn’t approve. And in both cases the people have failed to control their runaway government. Some much for government of the people… for the people.
This has made of All lies about China. Everyone of China population is very furious angry with America Lies. China is the number one of humanity rights country all history Mankind. Stop you’re lie. Stop before so much anger is reasons for war and revenge of slander. China all population extreme anger At lies. This cheating news internet must stop all China lies we command it today.
AiNoTame,
Learn english grammar. Your message is subverted when it is couched in “stupid.”
“Both ‘wars’ that the people didn’t aprove” is not a sentence. It is a sentance fragment.
“Some much for goveverment of the people…for the people” is incoherant and displays an incorrect usage of the elipses (which are three periods with a space between each one).
The sentence should read:
So much for the government of the people, for the people.
The truth is that there are grammatical errors in over half of the posts here. Why is it that the ill-informed are also sloppy. Why don’t you take pride in what you actually CAN take pride in: yourselves and how you present your thoughts.
Just have sex we are all going to die anyway but go to a better place.
Ron there are so many people like you. you have really nothing important to add to this conversation expect to criticize someones grammer. Why is it so important for people to speak proper English when they can be easily understood. Isn’t the message more important then how it was said. Why don’t people like you stop being dicks and just contribute something worth saying.
Relativists are complete idiots. Your comments are intolerable. Therefore, I shun you lest I risk dropping IQ points to the point forfeiting my ability to pick out my clothes or chose the proper food, you know, the basics.
i still think this olympics should not be supported, atleast from masses. a strong signal should go that people do not support violation of human right. and as i saw above, people are totally deviating from the main issue.
Tibet. if my country violates rights, then this does not mean we should not support human rights.
if relativists are idiots, that does not mean a cause should be lost
there be gramaratcial and speling erors, stil human value should not be lost
in the above comment,this part
(……and as i saw above, people are totally deviating from the main issue……
Tibet. if my country violates……)
should be read like this
“……and as i saw above, people are totally deviating from the main issue, Tibet.
if my country violates……”
It’s quite amazing that there is an argument here. For those who defend China, we basically have 2 positions in these posts: 1) China is great on human rights, and 2) US is worse than China. We don’t have to argue about this:
1- The Chinese authoritarian government is horrible on human rights. That’s just a fact, you don’t have to agree with it. It’s called reality. Do some research. Amnesty International is a good place to start.
2- The US’ record on human rights is irrelevant to this discussion. It’s like saying you can’t criticize Rwanda because North Korea is bad too. It’s absurd. The US certainly has its issues, especially since Bush II came on-board, and Amnesty also points them out. But it’s just not relevant to this discussion.
It is interesting how much we are focusing on China’s human rights violations when we are sponsoring an illegal pre-emptive war against a sovereign country (Iraq) that has cost over 4000 American lives and the lives of countless innocent civilians in Iraq. The world should be outraged at the US..and THEY should be banned from the Olympics. We can thank AIPAC and the Zionist dirtbags that led us into war. It is time that we confronted AIPAC directly..maybe after the spy trial that nobody even knows exists because of American mainstream media cover-up..FUCKING ROTTEN DOUCHBAGS!!!
My response.
[IMG]http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm223/Mutki/Germanyisgettingready.jpg[/IMG]
I really wish those who keep saying America has freedom of speech would quit saying it like we’re the only country who has it. If anything we have lost a great deal of our freedom. The media censors information we should be told because businesses don’t want us to hear it. It’s why I read international news as well as American media.
Look, the sad fact is that America is getting worse. We’ve already lost habeas corpus and I’m pretty sure we’ll lose more, we’re going into a state that is similar to Nazi Germany and our economy is about to tank, but our country is so apathetic it’s sickening. And no one takes protesters seriously anymore. It really makes me sad for my country.
I’ve been to China, and maybe in the past it was bad, but it is continually improving.